Language, Individual & Society, Volume 19, 2025

Rezumat: The popularity of detective narratives in children’s literature presents a curious paradox -how can a genre traditionally reliant on complex reasoning and adult notions of crime be effectively adapted for young readers? Even more intriguing is the emergence of detective picturebooks that blend the investigative allure of classic detective fiction with the visual exuberance and layered detail reminiscent of wimmelbooks aesthetics. Despite their growing presence on shelves, these hybrid texts have attracted little scholarly attention. While adult detective fiction is typically subsumed under ‘crime literature,’ its adaptations for children are often relegated to the broad categories of ‘adventure’ or ‘mystery’ stories, thereby obscuring their unique narrative and aesthetic strategies. This paper examines a selection of detective picturebooks, in particular Katerina Gorelik’s Detective Samson (2022), Paul Martin’s Énigmes à tous les étages T. 1 (2021) and Hiro Kamigaki’s and IC4DESIGN’s Pierre The Maze Detective: The Curious Case of the Castle in the Sky (2020) to examine how intricate visual arrangements and subtle textual cues converge to create an interactive reading experience. Employing a multimodal analytical framework, we assess the interplay of narrative structure and visual composition, focusing on elements such as the sequencing of events across pages, the use of recurring motifs, narrative pacing, and the distribution of textual and visual prompts that guide reader attention and generate suspense. Our analysis demonstrates that these picturebooks encourage active investigation, foster observational acuity, and support collaborative interpretation by inviting readers to navigate a labyrinth of clues and red herrings. Ultimately, our findings reveal that by intertwining the enigmatic allure of detective storytelling with the immersive quality of wimmelbook aesthetics, these picturebooks offer a promising avenue for cultivating analytical thinking and imaginative exploration in young readers, thereby redefining genre adaptation in children’s literature.