Shaping Sustainable Urban Landscapes Through Picturebooks: An Interdisciplinary COIL Journey

This chapter describes and analyses, within the field of children's literature and education, a Collaborative Online International Learning project (COIL) developed between three European universities, Padova (Italy), Aveiro (Portugal) and Gdansk (Poland). The project focused on the study of picturebooks representing the relationship between children and the city, with particular attention to the ways in which literary and visual narratives construct urban spaces, childhood experiences and environmental imaginaries. Entitled "Shaping Sustainable Urban Landscapes Through Picturebooks", the project combined theoretical reflection on children's literature with the close analysis of picturebooks from different cultural contexts and collaborative educational activities. Particular attention was devoted to the representation of environmental sustainability, social justice, ideologies, human and non-human relationships, and children's presence and agency within urban landscapes. Picturebooks were thus approached as cultural and educational texts capable of shaping perceptions of space, models of coexistence and visions of sustainable futures. The COIL format enabled students from different academic and cultural backgrounds to compare interpretive perspectives, develop shared analyses and produce collaborative video projects. The experience highlights the educational potential of picturebooks for fostering critical and visual literacy, intercultural dialogue and reflection on the relationships among childhood, urban environments and sustainability, while also showing how international collaborative learning can enrich the teaching and study of children's literature.