Winning and Nominated Picture Books From the Večernica Award Collection

Authors

Dragica Haramija
University of Maribor, Faculty of Education , University of Maribor, Faculty of Arts
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7624-9860
Janja Batič
University of Maribor, Faculty of Education
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18690/um.pef.3.2026.3

Synopsis

The chapter presents all eighteenpicture books that were awarded or nominated for the Večernica Award over the Award's thirty-year history. In the first part, we analysed the picture books in terms of their topics and the literary genres they represent. In the second part, a multimodal analysis of the picture book How to Hug a Hedgehog examines the influence of the illustrations on the summative meaning of the picture book. The findings of the content analysis showed that short prose and poetry were represented among the nominees. Short fantasy stories dominated the short prose works. The thematic analysis revealed two dominant themes, namely various human relationships and the lives of anthropomorphically portrayed animals. The results of the multimodal analysis of the selected picture book demonstrated that illustrations in a picture book significantly contribute to the way the topic is presented and developed. The influence of the illustrations on shaping the theme, the mood, the literary characters, etc., was also evident in the other nominated picture books.

Author Biographies

Dragica Haramija, University of Maribor, Faculty of Education, University of Maribor, Faculty of Arts

Dragica Haramija, PhD, is a full professor of Slovene literature at the University of Maribor; she lectures children's and young adult literature at the Faculty of Education and Faculty of Arts. Her basic field of work is children's and young adult literature (theories of genre and literary history). She is also involved in research on reading literacy and easy-to-read materials (easy reading). She has published 7 monographs, 85 scientific articles and more than 50 chapters in scientific monographs. In 2023, she was awarded the University of Maribor Prize for outstanding success, achievements and merits in scientific research and education.

Maribor, Slovenia. E-mail: dragica.haramija@um.si

Janja Batič, University of Maribor, Faculty of Education

Dr. Janja Batič is an assistant professor of special didactics (fine arts) at the Faculty of Education, University of Maribor. She has more than eighteen years of experience working with future primary school teachers. Janja Batič has been educating future fine arts teachers at the Department of Fine Arts since 2019. Her research interests include fine arts pedagogy, visual literacy, multimodal literacy and picture book research. She has published 2 scientific monographs, around 30 scientific articles and more than 20 independent chapters in scientific monographs.

Maribor, Slovenia. E-mail: janja.batic@um.si

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Volume

Trideset let literarne nagrade večernica

Published

August 3, 2026

Categories

Copyright (c) 2026 University of Maribor, University of Maribor Press

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Haramija, D., & Batič, J. (2026). Winning and Nominated Picture Books From the Večernica Award Collection. In D. Haramija (Ed.), Trideset let literarne nagrade večernica. University of Maribor Press. https://doi.org/10.18690/um.pef.3.2026.3