1 Introduction

The recent death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in Iran, at the hands of the so-called morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab correctly, shocked the world. The event sparked anger, drew international condemnation and drove discussion of women’s freedom of choice. In a wide act of solidarity and resistance, Iranian women marched the streets in Tehran taking off their hijabs and burning them. The event continues to generate protest against and resistance to fundamentalist religious decrees, though not without dire consequences for those actively opposing. In the Australian context, the Lindt Café siege in 2014 sparked a nationwide moral panic around Islamic extremism. The lone gunman claimed to be inspired/motivated by the Islamic State, and as such, the tragic killing of Tori Johnson, the café manager and barrister Katrina Dawson shocked the nation. While the Muslim community were quick to condemn the act, racist attacks towards Muslims and Muslim women in particular as ‘visible targets’ spread across the country. Shortly after, the ‘I’ll ride with you’ campaign trended worldwide on Twitter. Muslims worried about Islamophobic backlash on public transport were accompanied by sympathisers to use public transport. Amidst these horrific, headline-grabbing stories, many young Muslim girls sit in classrooms around the world wearing the hijab and are potentially targets for misunderstanding and alienation. As researchers who currently work with young Muslim school girls in Australia, we are impressed at their resilience in the face of such media coverage, when the possibility for misinterpretation and misrepresentation is rife, but also concerned that their lived experiences and experiential knowledge, which is different from dominant culture groups, are often relegated to the ‘too hard basket’, and not engaged with constructively in classrooms (Moll et al., 1992; Yosso, 2005).

The concept of difference is sprinkled liberally in Australian education circles, as a cause for celebration, but it is a contested term with consequences. For Bhabha (1994), diverse views and practices are permitted as long as they do not oppose dominant social orders. Distinguishing between diversity and difference, he argues that while diversity disguises the ethnocentric norms it references and reifies, difference does not. As noted elsewhere, ‘engaging with difference is one means by which to investigate the differences that exist between groups and the challenges they present to prevailing norms and practices’ (Author). However, difference is being weaponised in many spheres of public life, e.g. the sacking of Ilhan Omar, Democratic representative for Minnesota, and the first Somali-Muslim women to enter US congress. Attempts to silence, erase even, difference in education is also occurring with restrictions placed on what is possible in classrooms lest our inevitable differences cause discomfort to some. In 37 states in the USA, for example, classroom conversations are becoming more controlled with the introduction of laws that limit classroom discussion of ‘divisive concepts’ that make some white people feel uncomfortable or guilty (Spector et al., 2023), especially those around race and cultural and gender difference.

While this silencing will have detrimental effects on learning opportunities in classrooms, this sanctioning is also causing teachers to think creatively about how to work with ‘risky’ texts (Wessel-Powell & Bentley, 2022; Williams, 2022) and topics. Exploring critically how children’s picture books represent cultural difference through their multimodal elements is one possibility for illuminating how diversity is, and how it could be, represented, without resorting to things being ‘divisive’. The assumption that difference automatically leads to division is dangerous and runs counter to understandings of intercultural capabilities needed for modern societies to function well. Yet, deep divisions are becoming more commonplace globally, spurred by flawed but enduring notions of ‘the other’ (Said, 1978). Viewing difference as a generative force for understanding how cultural groups use symbols to make meaning can rupture taken-for-granted discourses (Janks, 2010). Kostogriz (2005) calls for a radical space in which ‘dialogic affirmation of difference’ (p. 155) channels attention to cultural hybridity and can cut across the binaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Such affirmation, we argue, can occur through working with children’s literature that grapples with difference.

Australia is home to migrant and refugee-background young people who observe cultural customs and religious rituals that are different from prevailing ‘mainstream’ culture, although this concept of a mainstream culture itself is highly contestable and any culture is always in a state of motion (Dervin, 2016). These young people populate our neighbourhoods and classrooms and are often subject to negative racial stereotyping, racist slurs and violence (UNHR, 2022). Yet, how often do we attempt to use this reality as a platform for developing deeper, more respectful understandings of racial and cultural difference in classrooms? The Australian Curriculum calls directly for this in its Intercultural Understanding Learning continuum (ACARA, 2023a). By end of Year 3, students are meant to be able to ‘identify and discuss the significance of a range of cultural events, artefacts or stories recognised in the school, community or nation’. By Year 8: ‘understand the importance of maintaining and celebrating cultural traditions for the development of personal, group and national identities’. The ultimate goal is enhanced mutual respect, acquiring balance between multiple and at times conflicting perspectives, and greater empathy. Similarly, in the Australian Curriculum Personal and Social Capability framework, by Year 4, children are meant to ‘discuss the value of diverse perspectives and describe a point of view that is different from their own’ (ACARA, 2023b). Children’s’ literature and its well-known role in building interdisciplinary empathy (Hammond & Kim, 2016) is an ideal catalyst for such investigations. As Adichie (2009) reminds us, there is much danger in ‘the single story’; where young children can grow up thinking that children like themselves can never exist in books, if they never see themselves in books. (See Abdel-Fattah, 2007 for a novel for older readers).

In this paper, we first outline the reasons for selecting this particular book — The Proudest Blue- a story of Hijab and family — and discuss the religious significance of the hijab, an often-misunderstood religious symbol. Following this, we provide an overview of critical multimodal literacy and the Critical Multimodal Literacy (CML) model proposed by Cappello et al. (2019) including why this was chosen to undertake the analysis of the picture book. We then present a reflection on the book by a young Muslim reader, followed by our analysis of the book. We conclude with some pedagogical possibilities for using the framework with the book in relation to various areas of the Australian curriculum.

2 Why this book?

Several factors led to the selection of this particular book for exploring stories that matter. First, the book deals with the relevance of cultural difference in contemporary social life at a time when difference is seen as a threat. Muhammad, the author of this book, explains that part of her motivation in writing the book was ‘that the parts of ourselves that might make us appear different are worth celebrating’ (p. 32). Second, the interrelated questions of what stories make worlds and what worlds make stories? Whose stories get told? and Whose stories do young people get access to in classrooms are all able to be explored in this book. The book provides the opportunity for teachers to explicitly address the International Literacy Association’s Children’s Rights to Read no. 4: ‘Children have the right to read texts that mirror their experiences and languages, provide windows into the lives of others, and open doors into our diverse world’ (ILA, 2023). As a multicultural picture book, it ‘showcases how people navigate social conceptions of culture, language, race, gender and other categories of difference. These books create opportunities for critical conversations and fundamentally challenge notions of what it means to live, be, and do by drawing from one’s cultural background and language in contexts influenced by global politics of power ‘ (Vehabovic, 2021, p. 383). The book responds to a broader community social issue and provides a way to bring this into the classroom to ‘accomplish socially responsive goals’ (Hsieh & Cridland-Hughes, 2022, p. 65). Third, the book draws attention to the authorship issue, or who gets to tell the stories we present to children? Can a story by an Olympic fencer, with lived experience of the hijab, be used in our classrooms, alongside well-known, children’s literary authors? In addition, the book is multimodally rich due also to the talent of the Egyptian-Canadian award-winning illustrator, Hatem Aly. Digitally rendered illustrations with textures using ink wash and pencil on watercolour paper accompany language choices and provide a range of opportunities to examine how multimodal features work together to construct meanings.

3 Significance of the hijab

As a non-Muslim, White, Australian-born woman, Author 1 quickly realised the need to understand more deeply the lived experience of a Muslim woman who wore the hijab in Australia. To that end, Author 2, an Australian-Jordanian Muslim woman who wears the hijab, and a teacher educator and Ph.D. candidate, was asked to co-author this paper. We talked about the fact that very few teachers in Australian schools are hijab-wearing, and that many teachers would not be aware of what the hijab symbolises. Author 2 shared her insights about what wearing the hijab means to her:

For Muslim women, the motivation behind wearing the hijab can be linked to both religious and cultural perspectives. A verse in the Quran outlines the recommendation for women to cover their bodies and hair to avoid harassment. Therefore, females who wear the hijab commonly assert its mandatory nature as a key aspect of their Islamic identity (Furseth, 2011). With the common misinterpretation of the hijab in Western media, and European bans on hijab wearing in schools and certain industries, some Muslim women wear it as a sign of pride and resistance to Western hegemony. There are other reasons for wearing the hijab which are associated with being liberated from societal pressures to conform to dominant representations of beauty (Doucleff, 2014) while valuing modesty and a desire to avoid sexual harassment. Enforcing it on girls and women, however, is a different story and a condemnable act. As with any religion, extremism can arise when inflexibility and indoctrination become the driving ideology which has seen groups such as ISIS and fundamentalists in Iran perform unspeakable acts of terrorism towards women (Chappell & Hernandez, 2022). The hijab itself is nothing more than a visible symbol of some Muslim women’s religious observance. But symbols, and the ways they are spoken about, get appropriated by discourses that have vested interests (See also Watt et al., 2019).

4 Critical multimodal literacy

Multimodal approaches to literacy have proliferated in recent decades, culminating in the now widespread acceptance of the significance of multimodality or ‘the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event ‘ (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001, p.20). The capacity for technology to influence the diversity of text types and textual practices, and associated flows across borders via the internet (NLG, 2000), along with digital innovations that can ‘create, modify, combine & disseminate images on a much broader scale than in the past ‘ (Mills, 2016, p. 66), has escalated this interest. Since the 1980s, developments in this field have turned to incorporating critical approaches to multimodality, seeking to explore how multimodal resources are put to ideological work by text creators, and how they can be interpreted, and challenged by text users. Fairclough, (1989) elucidates that a critical consciousness towards the functions of language and its associated modalities (e.g., visuals), rather than simply accessing or experiencing them, can show how discourses operate and how dominant discourses that marginalise others can be disrupted. Indeed, as we move even further into the ‘post-typographic epoch dominated by the visual image and multimodal texts, the analytical tools and interpretive repertoires we draw upon need to expand to support readers in new times ‘ (Serafini, 2010, p. 101). Intentionally focussing on multimodal communication ‘provides children, regardless of age, background, language ability, and literacy level, with powerful opportunities to build their understanding through various perspectives and ways of seeing ‘ (Cappello et al, 2019, p. 210), a necessary step in critical engagement with text construction. Various scholars have shown how to analyse picture books through a critical multimodal lens from which teachers can benefit; for example, Serafini (2005) provides analysis of Anthony Browne’s Voice in the Park (1999), and Dallacqua et al. (2015) explore Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (2006).

5 CML framework

Drawing from research literature and observations of children’s use of multimodal tools for agentive meaning-making and critical engagement with texts, Cappello et al. (2019) generated a critical multimodal literacy (CML) approach to explain the critical, multimodal literacy they were observing in action. It consists of four dimensions:

  1. 1.

    Communicating and learning with multimodal tools

  2. 2.

    Restorying, representing and redesigning

  3. 3.

    Acknowledging and shifting power relationships

  4. 4.

    Leveraging multimodal resources to critique and transform socio-political realities

Each of these is explained in more detail as we present the analysis below. The model provides ample scope to explore picture books and their multimodal elements critically with young people. This is significant at a time when reductive, and non-critical approaches to using literature in the classroom are favoured for their convenience (e.g. traditional reading comprehension tools) and the safety of neutrality. This leads to avoidance of what could be excellent opportunities to explore difficult topics such as cultural values and religion and the associated ‘affective intensities’ (Elwell, 2022, p. 138) that make us who we are.

5.1 A Muslim girl reflects on this book: ‘This book is very pretty but I think it needs it be more realistic’

Before we mobilise core concepts from CML (Cappello et al., 2019) to explore the multimodal affordances of The Proudest Blue, we begin this section with the interpretation of a Muslim Australian girl in Year 6 who started wearing the hijab recently. In doing so, we echo Cappello’s approach to privileging the perspective of young readers as they engage with learning material. When reading the story, Alina (pseudonym, 11 years old) was excited by the images and the representation of the hijab as a powerful symbol of strength and beauty and was compelled to create her own drawing of the hijab (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Alina’s drawing of the hijab and artist’s statement after reading the story

Full size image

After reading the story, Alina said it is not only a story about the hijab but also about bullying because she looks different from others. From her perspective, the story is relevant to everyone, not only girls who wear the hijab. She emphasises that for her, the key message is that girls who wear the hijab are both special and normal so its power lies in normalising a visible marker of difference ‘when people say something is special, they mean it as unique, but special and normal it’s like they are normalising something which is pretty nice. It’s better than just special’. She also likes how the story is relevant for older and younger children in terms of bullying and raising cultural awareness. Alina noted: ‘This book is good for everyone, even the bullies, because it helps them understand that they need to stop and rewind before they go and attack someone. They need to understand’. On the relevance of this story for older children, and its use as a pedagogical tool, she thought more was needed for older children such as researching what is hijab and why it is important.

Astutely, Alina also comments on the need for stories to give voice to older hijab-wearing girls as she sees this is missing (and she intends to write that story when she is older). She also comments on how she does not think that the girl could be wearing the hijab for the first time and then ‘learn straight away to drop the hateful words and not let the bullies annoy her’. She says that ‘this takes years’. For her, being someone who was bullied for wearing the hijab at school by peers (who labelled it as a tablecloth as in the book), it is a lengthy emotional, cognitive and social process where teachers play a pivotal role in supporting both parties. She reflects:

This story is very pretty but I think it needs to be more realistic...maybe it can go into more detail of how she feels and how the bullying affected her…if we want people to understand to stop bullying her….this story is not just about the hijab. This girl is also black, so we need to go deeper to help the bullies understand the problem. We need to see how she is feeling

Alina’s insights in the above quotes draw attention to the intersections of religion with race and ethnicity, and skin colour that may signify race and ethnicity, along with the affective domain of the lived experience. It also highlights that hijab-wearing girls in mainstream schools can endure a long journey of derision and alienation.

6 Analysing multimodal resources in The Proudest Blue

The question guiding our analysis was: How does this book attempt to achieve its aim of promoting confidence in difference through the multimodal resources it deploys? It is impossible to separate the modal choices out neatly into the four categories — they work iteratively in collaboration — so our analysis highlights some that compellingly do the work of each dimension. [It will be useful for readers of this paper to have the book beside them while reading this analysis to see the artwork. A reading of the book can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiNNuUWCpsY].

  • 1. Communicating and learning with multimodal tools

Picture books are essentially configurations of multimodal tools, in a limited form by contemporary digital standards, but they are still widely used in classrooms and at homes. Their multimodal elements work in concert to construct and represent the characters’ experiences and present the key messages of the text. The aim of this section is to present our interpretation of the multimodal tools the author and illustrator have put to use to construct the story’s meaning. The analysis here also draws on de Silva Joyce and Gaudin’s (2007) resource book for interpreting the visual. In this text, they explore a range of visual semiotic systems, based largely on Kress (2003) and Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), and how image makers use them to represent the world. It provides an accessible meta-language for analysing images and articulating meaning-making and aligns with Serafini’s (2010, 2014) perceptual and structural content and design elements and their functions.

The multimodal ensemble of tools in this book centres on written language and illustrations with almost naïve, cartoon style drawings which would have wide appeal. Specifically, the analysis here attends to: image selection — what is in frame layout and the position of characters — especially close ups and distance; choice of colour, blocks of colour, intensity; use of space on the page; vectors (the line that leads our eye from one element to another) and gaze (where the figure is looking); shadows and texturing; facial expressions; language (words chosen for description and dialogue); symbols and motifs. A selection of the analysis is given here due to space considerations. We use page numbers since this is what might teachers use, rather than picture book template terms such as recto/verso.

Not surprisingly, given the topic, most of the images depict children going to school, in the school yard, in class. There are also two two-page spreads showing internal reflection on an event, e.g. hearing Mama’s voice on page 10 and 16. This works to invoke the intergenerational connections promoted by the book — mother, older sister, younger sister — an important construct in many families, not just Muslim. In many of the images, the girls or Mama are positioned centrally, and in some instances, almost fill the whole page (p.10 and 21) suggesting their importance. The girls are depicted as actively moving doing normal things — walking, waving, running, twirling, cartwheeling, striding away, sailing — and the movement at times spans across two pages making it appear more expansive (p. 19–20; 23–24). Of significance is that the bullies are never centrally framed although there is one scene where they are menacingly overpowering Faizah, the younger sister, from the top right-hand corner of the page while she is depicted as smaller and afraid (p. 25). No doubt this is for effect to impress upon the reader the experience of being bullied.

The colours chosen in this book are noteworthy. The turquoise blue used to depict the hijab (and its relationship with the sea and sky) is highly significant in the Islamic religion. Blue (turquoise and cobalt) is traditionally favoured in architecture, for example, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul also known as the Blue Mosque. The mosque is not just a place of worship but also a place to escape the world and experience peace, also signified by the colour blue. The religious significance of this could be lost on young readers without some deconstruction informed by diversity.

Space is used to denote distance or closeness between the characters. Asiya and Faizah are usually drawn close together, and Asiya is often connected to Mama through the use of solid colour (p. 15–16). In the scene where Faizah deals with the bully (p.23–24), she is depicted striding off into the top right-hand corner of the double page spread, creating ‘fort-eight steps’-worth of distance between him and her.

In the pages where the reader is drawn into Faizah’s internal reflections, the vectors change. In one instance (p. 15–16), the vectors show her gazing up at Mama while Mama looks out of frame to the top right beyond the page. Her gaze leads us out of the book, offering the reader an invitation to see beyond. On another page, Asiya’s gaze is directly at the reader (p. 21) demanding connection and understanding. The language used here, as additional mode, creates a link to the theme of bullying by juxtaposing a derogatory term for the hijab (tablecloth), with a reference back to the sacred colour blue:

Asiya’s hijab isn’t a tablecloth.

Asiya’s hijab is blue.

Only blue. (p. 21).

In terms of shadows and texturing, the bullies appear in featureless form like shadows (p. 14 and 20) which we interpret as an attempt to make them seem less powerful giving Faizah the narrative potency. Her vigour as a character is reinforced by the rich range of facial expressions Faizah displays in the illustrations, from playfulness (p.3), adoration (p.5), concern (p. 11), anger (p. 24) and fear (p.25), depicting an array of emotional responses any young person might experience in day at school. This affective arc, spanning the plot, points to her on-going identity construction as a theme, supported by the language choices in the text when Mama’s voice echoes in Faizah’s mind: ‘Some people won’t understand your hijab…but if you understand who you are one day they will’ (p. 16).

Regarding symbols and motifs, throughout the book, there are several that conjure the meeting of two worlds, an obvious necessity if bullying ‘the other’ (Said, 1978) is to cease. The ocean meeting sky on the horizon line — two universal symbols of expansiveness coming together without distinction— is a key motif throughout, enhancing the opportunity to use the colour blue. The motif serves the theme of sisters being strong in their cultural identity, supported by the language mode: ‘No line between the water and the sky’ (p.2) and ‘Two princesses in hijab having a picnic on an island where the ocean meets the sky’ (p.17).

  • 2. Restorying, representing and redesigning

Through telling new stories, or retelling old stories in new ways, new representations and re-designs are made possible. Re-storying makes it possible to see ways of resisting the single story and moving towards textual justice (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016). Janks (2010) posits that design without diversity ‘privileges dominant forms and fails to use the design resources provided by difference’ (p.178). In The Proudest Blue, the author and illustrator mobilise design with diversity drawing on difference as a resource for design (Alford, 2021). In the process, it re-stories the everyday lives of Muslim girls, from dominant misconceptions to a realistic representation based on first-hand experience. The book begins with the mother and daughters buying the hijab. This has a normalising effect by starting the story with this event in a rather taken-for-granted way. No time is spent by the author setting this up. Mama and the girls are in the foreground, and the hijab is in clear focus in the centre of the frame. The readers’ eyes are drawn to the wall of colourful hijabs, representing them as central not peripheral or marginal, and thereby re-storying their significance. On page 6, the hijab is personified by giving it a human attribute — the ability to smile. ‘Her hijab smiles at me the whole way.’ In doing so, the book casts the hijab as something friendly and not threatening. Combined with the blue colour of the hijab, the colour of the ocean and sky, both of which are universal signifiers of vastness, majesty and the infinite, positive connotations are built.

A narrative shift happens through the language mode on the following page (7) where another child says, ‘What’s that on your sister’s head?’ and the hijab is referred to as a ‘scarf’ via a ‘whisper’ hinting at the shame felt by children who are visibly different in the school yard context. This gives the story some complexity, acknowledging that the hijab is misunderstood which is built upon later in the story when the hijab is referred to disparagingly as a tablecloth. However, we are quickly brought back to the core message using didactic language, that the hijab is ‘always there, special and normal’ (p. 9). The accompanying image blends the blue of the sky with fluffy, white clouds and the hijab. The close-up framing on Mama’s face creates intimacy. Her eyes are closed, perhaps in prayer, depicting self-assurance and contentment. The language mode assists with this re-storying of the hijab: ‘The first day of wearing hijab is important…it means being strong’ (p. 10). Re-storying is also achieved throughout the bullying incident (pages 13–25) via the intrepid behaviour of Faizah such as looking angrily at the bullies and marching away from them and drawing on memories of familial messages about the meaning of the hijab.

  • 3. Acknowledging and shifting power relationships

Closely examining how multimodal resources are utilised to establish power relations in texts (Callow, 2013; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001, 2006) is a step in enabling deconstruction of how power is represented. This can then lead to powerful re-design (Janks, 2010). In re-storying, the book acknowledges that despite the sisters’ view of the hijab, bullying will and does occur. However, the story shifts the power using some further interesting devices. On page 13, we see a group of young people, not just the victim, who is angered and shocked at the bullying. The girls have support from a diverse range of peers. This normalises collective outrage against bullies and gathers power around the Muslim girls. Unified vectors — all the young people are looking directly at the bullies — and placement in the foreground, their eyes on equal plane with the bullies’ eyes, help achieve this. The faceless, colourless, ill-specified bullies in the background are depicted as not special, suggesting they are the ones who are ‘othered’, juxtaposed against Asiya, centred and salient, who is ‘someone’. (This could inspire interesting conversation with children about whether this is reality in the schoolyard or purely optimistic). The very next image (p. 15–16) confirms the power shift to the hijab with a double-page image of Asiya top right, her gaze looking off the page (to the future?), riding the crest of a wave, her oversized hijab blending in with the ocean and Faizah, gazing up at her and sailing comfortably in a paper boat in her sister’s calm wake. Another example of shifting power relations is when Asiya’s gaze is directly at the reader (p. 21), her face taking up almost all of the page, asserting power. A potential critique of this book is that the hijab-wearing girl’s voice, and therefore power, is missing. The book is told from the perspective of her younger sister with Mama’s voice also featuring. This could suggest a stereotypical, deficit view of young women wearing a hijab being weak and needing defence, a view that could be discussed in classrooms through using this book.

  • 4. Leveraging multimodal resources to critique and transform socio-political realities

All texts present some form of socio-political reality, and multimodal features help achieve this. When focussing on multimodal resources with a critical consciousness, children can see how resources can be leveraged to propose new visions of communities and practices (Cappello et al., 2019; Mora, 2017). This book deploys multimodal tools to comment on and shift how the hijab can be seen socio-politically. In spite of the taunting reference to the domestic ‘tablecloth’ by the bullies in the book, Faizah sees ‘only blue’ (p. 21). All she sees is the colour, symbolising majesty and the faith behind it, not the thing itself. In addition, when striding away from the ‘yelling boy’, Faizah’s 48 footsteps are centred across the double-page spread (p. 23–24) which we suggest critiques that notion that young Muslim girls are always victims of bullying. The reader’s eyes are drawn from bottom left to top right through the vector to her face looking back at the bully in anger. Her body is strong — arms swinging, legs stomping; she is not running scared. She has transformed reality by confidently removing herself from the abuse and creating distance between herself and the bully. Also, his ‘yelling’ is depicted as a paltry puff of air, drawn with scribbled lines, diminishing its presence in the image and therefore its impact. The bully is drawn using shadow-like colours and he is small, just like Faizah. However, being bully-free is not so simple as striding away. The book attempts to comment on this socio-political reality through the spectre of bullying being still there, shown on p. 25 when the shadows of the bullies loom large in the top right-hand corner, and she is edging away looking frightened.

There is much to deconstruct in this text to explore the ways the multiple modes have been mobilised in concert in an attempt to achieve its overall aim. The analysis here, when shared with children in age-appropriate terms, can be a catalyst for exploring difference and in turn encouraging them to communicate their own differences with multimodal tools. As teachers explore the use of these elements, children can experiment with them in their own designs, thereby learning how to manipulate them for their own meaning-making purposes, in unexpected, imaginative and limitless ways (Cappello et al, 2019). Teachers can use the four dimensions as an investigative lens to frame discussions with children of this and other texts and how they construct and represent different realities. To facilitate practical use, we have devised some teacher-and-learner-friendly probes for doing this work in Table 1.

Table 1 Discussion starters based on CML when reading picture books with children
Full size table

7 Pedagogical applications

In this final section, we offer pedagogical suggestions for using the book in relation to aspects of the Australian curriculum. We recommend introducing The Proudest Blue to children in years 3–5 as a text to read and for year 6 students as a stimulus for further learning on the topic of diversity, culture, religion or racism, and so on. We emphasise that this is our interpretation of the book, and we acknowledge that there will be other interpretations/applications by other readers.

7.1 Intercultural understanding capability

With consideration of the Australian Curriculum General Capabilities, this story supports teachers working towards two elements in Intercultural Understanding: ‘recognising culture and developing respect’ and ‘interacting and empathising with others’. The book provides ample opportunity for teachers to illustrate cultural identity through a discussion on the relevance of the hijab to Muslim girls. Teachers may also show the ‘variability within and across cultures’ by discussing the diversity of Muslims and the fact that hijab is worn as a sign of observance and is strongly tied with ideological views (Ruby, 2006). Importantly, there is also a possibility of a Muslim girl not wearing the hijab which promotes moving beyond binary views and resisting cultural/religious homogeneity (Hamzeh, 2011). By the end of year 6, students needed to demonstrate the ability to ‘explore and compare cultural knowledge beliefs and practices’ which could be achieved through reading this story as a stimulus and then inviting the children to share their views. Having a guest reader from the community who wears the hijab would create an authentic learning experience where children can engage in discussions and questions which will reduce the cultural/knowledge burden on the teacher. Students could also conduct surveys to find out about objects of cultural/sub-cultural/religious/racial/ethnic significance to everyone in the class, perhaps with a focus on clothing that signifies things to different groups, for example socks and hairstyles. This would also connect with the Personal and Social General Capability sub-element: appreciate diverse perspectives, expected from Year 1.

7.2 Humanities and social sciences

Developing understanding of different religious and cultural practices such as wearing the hijab aligns with the year 4 HASS level descriptor ‘How people, places and environments interact, past and present’. In particular, we see this book an excellent discussion point for issues around law and citizenship highlighting the religious discrimination bill legislated in 2021 that stipulates: ‘Australians are protected from discrimination on the basis of religious belief or activity – just as they are protected from discrimination on the basis of age, sex, race and disability’ (Australian Government, 2021). A natural extension to the discussion would be highlighting how bullying a girl for wearing the hijab is a form of discrimination and thus should not be tolerated or accepted. For children in year 6, the discussion could be elicited through inquiry questions such as ‘How have experiences of democracy and citizenship differed between groups over time and place’ (ACARA, 2023c) which can be an opportunity to discuss the most recent Australian federal election which saw Fatima Payman become the first hijab-wearing Muslim woman to be elected as a senator.

7.3 English

Picture books are recommended for early primary year levels (until year 4) but can still be a helpful stimulating resource for year 5 and 6 students as to interpret points of view and forms of difference. Exploring voice and the author’s background as an Olympian fencer and a black Muslim woman will help children develop literacy skills as they develop an understanding of power and challenge stereotypical representations of hegemonic identities in society. This understanding could further be enhanced by giving the children in year 5 and 6 the opportunity to construct a narrative around their identity highlighting visible and invisible aspects of themselves. Discussing the elements that the author and illustrator use to make the story exciting and engaging such as the visual images is linked to year 3’s literature content descriptor. For example, teachers can discuss how the hijab is used symbolically to illustrate grandness, normality and beauty. Students in year 5 could reflect on how point of view is conveyed through the book’s vocabulary, including idiomatic expressions (e.g. tablecloth) and objective and subjective language. In line with Alina’s suggestion and our earlier discussion on the importance of providing culturally relevant books for minoritized communities, further book suggestions include: Does my Head Look Big in This by Randa Abdel-Fattah for ages 13 + and A Muslim Girls Guide to Life's BIG Changes by Rayhana Khan for ages 9–14.

7.4 Art, technology and design

Research the significance of Islamic Art and Architecture and engage an artist to draw symmetrical, geometric drawings/constructions, and do VR tours of famous Islamic buildings — Hagia Sophia Mosque in Istanbul which used to be a Christian cathedral. They can recreate and redesign mosaics and make a wall mural of them and research, design and sew modern headwear for Muslim and non-Muslim fashion followed by a voluntary fashion parade.

8 Concluding thoughts

In this paper, we have provided a multimodal analysis of The Proudest Blue framed by dimensions offered by Cappello et al.’s (2019) critical multimodal analysis framework, to explore the concept of difference. We have offered some practical ways to connect its use with the Australian curriculum and have privileged the insights of an Australian Muslim girl on the book’s construction, omissions and implications. While we have shown our interpretation of how the book combines multimodal elements to achieve its aim, we are left with some wonderings. Does the neat resolution sanitise the real impact of racism and religious misunderstanding on many young people? There are three attempts in the book to show this complexity — addressing bullying itself as a topic; the use of the derogatory tablecloth term and shadows of the bullies as the ever-present spectre of fear. Yet there are no consequences for the bullies and, as Alina points out, no exploration of Asiya’s feelings and experience. Is the book too didactic? There is clearly a moral, didactic impetus but in the context of racism borne of visible difference where girls wearing hijab are real targets of abuse, and in the absence of other picture books that address this issue head on, is this such a bad thing? The book’s symbolic significance is perhaps where we see most value. We argue that the text moves away from the narratives around the hijab as a symbol of oppression or indoctrination, making it suitable for an Australian, multicultural but predominately White context where hijab wearing clearly marks a minority religious/cultural identity. While certain symbols are sometimes unnoticed by outsiders (Serafini, 2014), the hijab is highly notice-able but much misunderstood. Symbols such as the hijab, can be noticed but deliberately ignored, erased, relegated, denied and hidden unless they become the star of the story.