Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
59 58
kanice, namenjene v prvi vrsti otrokom. Medbesedilne transformacijske strategije 
ter odnos med literarnimi in likovnimi plastmi so v članku analizirani z namenom 
opazovanja modela ohranjanja đakovske (slavonske) kulturne dediščine v kontekstu 
sodobnega (ne)otroškega bralca. Izbrane slikanice iz Đakova, ki se neposredno ali 
obrobno dotikajo območja Đakova, v zgodovinskem, etnološkem, književnem, jezi­ kovnem, likovnem in kulturnem kontekstu pomenijo pomemben prispevek k poetiki 
ljudskih slikanic znotraj slavonskega literarnega modela. Skozi proces parafraziranja 
besedila ustne pravljice in z uporabo ustreznih medbesedilnih transformacijskih 
strategij, temelječih na jezikovnih, literarnih in umetniških stilističnih postopkih, so 
bile dosežene spremembe poetike v odnosu do izvirnih besedil, likovni poudarek na 
artefaktih iz ljudske dediščine pa je slikanice še dodatno folklorno kontekstualiziral.
Introduction
In recent times, Croatian children’s literature has seen the production of pic­ ture books and illustrated books, whose focus are literary and visual narratives of 
cultural heritage contents with the intention of promoting native cultural values   
among the youngest readers. The appearance of such art books with themes of 
native contents, from historical, natively contextualized persons and events, thro­ ugh local microtopos, to a wide range of cultural, ethnological­anthropological 
native phenomena, with a greater or lesser retention of the local language idiom, 
gave birth to a special type of picture book that we can call ­ native picture book. 
Inscribing regional poetics in this literary genre also supports the theory of literary 
regionalism (Brešić 2004), i.e. literary topography – micro­regionalisation (Kolar 
2013), which focuses on regionally marked literary texts related to a specific space 
and/or language, without the intention of partialisation of Croatian children’s lite­ rature, with the aim of valorizing lesser­known authors, which is supported by the 
thesis of Stjepan Hranjec, who believes that:
/…/all (...) literature in fact, not only Croatian, more or less regional: the writer will, at least 
in part, look for material and inspiration where he spent the most beautiful, most intense part 
of his life. The phenomenon will be especially intensified in children’s literature because many 
writers ­ wanting to get closer to the child ­ travel to their own childhood, to their native land, 
so it is completely justified to talk about children’s literary regionalism. (Hranjec 2006: 261). 
Although most of the native picture books have an informational and educational 
role due to their functionality, a part of them, created on the basis of oral­literary 
forms, can also be viewed through an aesthetic function, which also includes educa­ tional and entertainment function. Part of the scientific interest in heritage­oriented 
picture books is also evidenced by the study “Izlet u muzej na mala vrata” (“Trip to 
the Museum Through Small Doors”) (2014) by Diana Zalar, Antonija Balić Šimrak 
and Stjepko Rupčić, in which the authors, from a literary­theoretical, literary­histo­ rical and artistic point of view, on the corpus of printed picture books in Croatian 
city museums, among other things, question how Croatian cultural heritage is refle­ cted in picture books. Offering several answers related to the poetics and typology 
of museum picture books, which cover a wide field of thematizing cultural heritage 
 
SANJA VRCIĆ-MATAIJA
1
Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium  
of Picture Books – (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage 
in Croatian Native Picture Books
Following the theory of literary regionalism (Brešić 2004; Kolar 2013), this paper interprets 
part of the literary oeuvre of Mirko Ćurić, a Croatian writer from Đakovo, through the 
prism of the Slavonic literary model. The analysis includes three native picture books created 
by interpolating the oral heritage of Đakovo (collected in 1936 – Papratović), and in collab-
oration with visual artists (Vjekoslav Radoičić, Gualtiero Mocenni and Simone Mocenni 
Beck, Manuela Vladić Maštruko): Palčić (Thumbling), Mladoženja jež (Hedgehog Groom) 
and Hrabri pijetao (Brave Rooster). Starting from the oral fairy tale as the original text 
(Genette 1997), embedded in the medium of the picture book, the method of transferring the 
oral literary text into the author’s artistic medium of the picture book, primarily designed 
for children, is interpreted, the intertextual transformation strategies and the relationship 
between the literary and artistic layers are analysed with the aim of observing the model 
of preservation of Đakovo’s (Slavonic) cultural heritage in the context of the contemporary 
(non)child reader. Selected picture books from Đakovo, touching directly or marginally on 
the Đakovo area, in the historical, ethnological, literary, linguistic, artistic and cultural con-
text, represent a significant contribution to the poetics of native picture books within the 
Slavonian literary model. Through the process of paraphrasing the text of an oral fairy tale, 
through the implementation of appropriate intertextual transformation strategies, achieved 
through linguistic, literary, and artistic stylistic procedures, changes in poetics in relation to 
the original texts were recorded, and through artistic enhancement with heritage artefacts, 
the picture books were additionally contextualized natively.
Članek na osnovi teorije literarnega regionalizma (Brešić 2004; Kolar 2013) skozi 
prizmo slavonskega literarnega modela interpretira del literarnega opusa Mirka 
Ćurića, hrvaškega pisca iz Đakova. Analiza obravnava tri ljudske slikanice, nastale z 
interpolacijo ljudskega izročila Đakova (zbranega leta 1936 – Papratović) in v sode­ lovanju z likovnimi umetniki (Vjekoslav Radoičić, Gualtiero Mocenni in Simone 
Mocenni Beck, Manuela Vladić Maštruko). To so Palčić (Thumbling), Mladoženja 
jež (Hedgehog Groom) in Hrabri pijetao (Brave Rooster). Izhajajoč iz ljudske pra­ vljice kot izvirnega besedila (Genette 1997), vdelane v medij slikanice, članek inter­ pretira metodo prenosa ustnega knjižnega besedila v avtorjev umetniški medij sli­ 1 Co­authorship with Andrea Selec, mag. prim. educ., former student of Department of Teacher Edu­ cation Studies in Gospić.

Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
59 58
kanice, namenjene v prvi vrsti otrokom. Medbesedilne transformacijske strategije 
ter odnos med literarnimi in likovnimi plastmi so v članku analizirani z namenom 
opazovanja modela ohranjanja đakovske (slavonske) kulturne dediščine v kontekstu 
sodobnega (ne)otroškega bralca. Izbrane slikanice iz Đakova, ki se neposredno ali 
obrobno dotikajo območja Đakova, v zgodovinskem, etnološkem, književnem, jezi­ kovnem, likovnem in kulturnem kontekstu pomenijo pomemben prispevek k poetiki 
ljudskih slikanic znotraj slavonskega literarnega modela. Skozi proces parafraziranja 
besedila ustne pravljice in z uporabo ustreznih medbesedilnih transformacijskih 
strategij, temelječih na jezikovnih, literarnih in umetniških stilističnih postopkih, so 
bile dosežene spremembe poetike v odnosu do izvirnih besedil, likovni poudarek na 
artefaktih iz ljudske dediščine pa je slikanice še dodatno folklorno kontekstualiziral.
Introduction
In recent times, Croatian children’s literature has seen the production of pic­ ture books and illustrated books, whose focus are literary and visual narratives of 
cultural heritage contents with the intention of promoting native cultural values   
among the youngest readers. The appearance of such art books with themes of 
native contents, from historical, natively contextualized persons and events, thro­ ugh local microtopos, to a wide range of cultural, ethnological­anthropological 
native phenomena, with a greater or lesser retention of the local language idiom, 
gave birth to a special type of picture book that we can call ­ native picture book. 
Inscribing regional poetics in this literary genre also supports the theory of literary 
regionalism (Brešić 2004), i.e. literary topography – micro­regionalisation (Kolar 
2013), which focuses on regionally marked literary texts related to a specific space 
and/or language, without the intention of partialisation of Croatian children’s lite­ rature, with the aim of valorizing lesser­known authors, which is supported by the 
thesis of Stjepan Hranjec, who believes that:
/…/all (...) literature in fact, not only Croatian, more or less regional: the writer will, at least 
in part, look for material and inspiration where he spent the most beautiful, most intense part 
of his life. The phenomenon will be especially intensified in children’s literature because many 
writers ­ wanting to get closer to the child ­ travel to their own childhood, to their native land, 
so it is completely justified to talk about children’s literary regionalism. (Hranjec 2006: 261). 
Although most of the native picture books have an informational and educational 
role due to their functionality, a part of them, created on the basis of oral­literary 
forms, can also be viewed through an aesthetic function, which also includes educa­ tional and entertainment function. Part of the scientific interest in heritage­oriented 
picture books is also evidenced by the study “Izlet u muzej na mala vrata” (“Trip to 
the Museum Through Small Doors”) (2014) by Diana Zalar, Antonija Balić Šimrak 
and Stjepko Rupčić, in which the authors, from a literary­theoretical, literary­histo­ rical and artistic point of view, on the corpus of printed picture books in Croatian 
city museums, among other things, question how Croatian cultural heritage is refle­ cted in picture books. Offering several answers related to the poetics and typology 
of museum picture books, which cover a wide field of thematizing cultural heritage 
 
SANJA VRCIĆ-MATAIJA
1
Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium  
of Picture Books – (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage 
in Croatian Native Picture Books
Following the theory of literary regionalism (Brešić 2004; Kolar 2013), this paper interprets 
part of the literary oeuvre of Mirko Ćurić, a Croatian writer from Đakovo, through the 
prism of the Slavonic literary model. The analysis includes three native picture books created 
by interpolating the oral heritage of Đakovo (collected in 1936 – Papratović), and in collab-
oration with visual artists (Vjekoslav Radoičić, Gualtiero Mocenni and Simone Mocenni 
Beck, Manuela Vladić Maštruko): Palčić (Thumbling), Mladoženja jež (Hedgehog Groom) 
and Hrabri pijetao (Brave Rooster). Starting from the oral fairy tale as the original text 
(Genette 1997), embedded in the medium of the picture book, the method of transferring the 
oral literary text into the author’s artistic medium of the picture book, primarily designed 
for children, is interpreted, the intertextual transformation strategies and the relationship 
between the literary and artistic layers are analysed with the aim of observing the model 
of preservation of Đakovo’s (Slavonic) cultural heritage in the context of the contemporary 
(non)child reader. Selected picture books from Đakovo, touching directly or marginally on 
the Đakovo area, in the historical, ethnological, literary, linguistic, artistic and cultural con-
text, represent a significant contribution to the poetics of native picture books within the 
Slavonian literary model. Through the process of paraphrasing the text of an oral fairy tale, 
through the implementation of appropriate intertextual transformation strategies, achieved 
through linguistic, literary, and artistic stylistic procedures, changes in poetics in relation to 
the original texts were recorded, and through artistic enhancement with heritage artefacts, 
the picture books were additionally contextualized natively.
Članek na osnovi teorije literarnega regionalizma (Brešić 2004; Kolar 2013) skozi 
prizmo slavonskega literarnega modela interpretira del literarnega opusa Mirka 
Ćurića, hrvaškega pisca iz Đakova. Analiza obravnava tri ljudske slikanice, nastale z 
interpolacijo ljudskega izročila Đakova (zbranega leta 1936 – Papratović) in v sode­ lovanju z likovnimi umetniki (Vjekoslav Radoičić, Gualtiero Mocenni in Simone 
Mocenni Beck, Manuela Vladić Maštruko). To so Palčić (Thumbling), Mladoženja 
jež (Hedgehog Groom) in Hrabri pijetao (Brave Rooster). Izhajajoč iz ljudske pra­ vljice kot izvirnega besedila (Genette 1997), vdelane v medij slikanice, članek inter­ pretira metodo prenosa ustnega knjižnega besedila v avtorjev umetniški medij sli­ 1 Co­authorship with Andrea Selec, mag. prim. educ., former student of Department of Teacher Edu­ cation Studies in Gospić.

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
60 61
them the stories live on in contemporary culture; for children, stories have preserved their 
original charm until today; it’s all like that ­ but what can they say by themselves even today to 
an adult cultured reader of literature? To many, certainly nothing” (Bošković­Stulli 1963: 26).
Emphasizing the appropriateness of folk tales for children, their focus on chil­ dren’s recipients is evident in the words of the fairy tale collector of the Đakovo 
region ­ Milena Papratović: “`Short stories` are told in the village in the winter 
during spinning or conversing, grandmothers tell them to children, while young 
men tell them when they are herding cattle or pigs, or again by women when they 
are combing (plucking) feathers. ” (Papratović 2020: 12). This point of view, howe­ ver, does not give us the right to claim that the contemporary children’s implicit 
reader communicates with the world of oral fairy tales in a simple manner. The 
distant time frame from the thirties of the last century, when the stories were wri­ tten down, extends to the middle of the 19th century when dating, the time in 
which the grandmother of one of the most common storytellers lived, which is 
culturally significantly different from the present. Starting from a potentially inte­ rested children’s audience, respecting its contemporary repertoire and the horizon 
of expectations that make up social, cultural and historical norms (Majhut 2005), 
Mirko Ćurić, writer from Đakovo, together with a group of visual artists, initiated 
the “Đakovačka slikovnica” (“Đakovo’s Picture Book”) project in 2004, to bridge 
the cultural imaginarium. Starting from the contemporary “idea of   the child to 
whom he is addressing” (Majhut 2005: 74), he tried through the narrative and arti­ stic layer ­ “by collective authorship” (Hameršak­Zima 2015: 95) to preserve the 
Slavonic oral fairy tale innovated in the form of a native picture book, and to make 
the native cultural heritage of Đakovo close to the youngest readers.
3
 The editors 
of the reprints of Đakovo fairy tales had this in mind, whose narrative is enriched 
with illustrations by the young artist from Đakovo, Dajana Karas, and in which 
the original Slavonic language idiom is preserved. “It is Croatian heritage and a 
national treasure that today should be offered to everyone, especially young people 
and children, so that they too, like in the past, read them, and their grandmothers 
would tell stories to their children. ” (Svirac 2020:5­6). Authors of Đakovo picture 
books have solved the problem of bridging the “imaginarium of another time” 
(Francem 2020: 111) by dressing native oral stories in picture books, making them 
suitable for children, while preserving the narrative of Đakovo’s native heritage by 
implementing several intertextual transformation strategies. 
Intertextual Strategies in the Relationship Between Oral Fairy Tales and 
Native Picture Books 
Acknowledging the fact that a fairy tale and a picture book are two different 
artistic expressions of specific poetics, aware of the challenges that the transfer of 
the text of an oral fairy tale into a picture book contains, we focused the interpre­ tation on the comparison of the original text and the picture book. “If you want 
3 It is a series of about twenty picture books based on folk tales collected by Milena Papratović, the first doctor 
of ethnology in Croatia (Živaković Kerže 2011), who in 1936, while visiting the villages of Đakovo, collected 
about forty folk tales, thematically and structurally diverse, which saw their repeated edition in 2020.
(from contemporary reinterpretations of children’s literature classics, through pic­ ture books dealing with famous scientists and artists, with cultural heritage of the 
native area to those whose focus are Croatian folk tales, with greater or lesser litera­ ry­linguistic interventions), it is clear that in the typologically diverse picture books 
marked with cultural heritage contents, there is a larger part of those created on the 
basis of an oral fairy tale, the transformation of which creates a new verbal­visual 
medium, with all the challenges it carries a noticeable complex and demanding poe­ tics of the picture book. The picture books of the Đakovo region, originally collected 
and published in the thirties of the twentieth century, subsequently printed in the 
edition of the Đakovo cultural circle and the City of Đakovo as part of the “Sli­ kovnice Đakovačkih novina” (“Đakovo’s newspapers picture books”), with all the 
peculiarities of belonging to the “Slavonic literary model” (Ivon and Vrcić­Mataija 
2019) are exposed to such challenge. Therefore, starting from the oral fairy tale as a 
source text/hypotext (Genette 1997), embedded in the medium of a picture book, in 
this paper we deal with the ways of transferring oral literature into the new, author’s 
medium of a picture book primarily designed for children, with the aim of detecting 
intertextual transformation strategies in three narrative picture books of the Đakovo 
region: “Palčić” (“Thumbling”), “Mladoženja jež” (“Hedgehog Groom”) and “Hrabri 
pijetao” (“Brave Rooster”)
2
, with the relationship between the literary and artistic 
layers and models of preservation of the Đakovo’s (Slavonic) cultural heritage in the 
context of the contemporary (non)child reader, contributing to the understanding 
of the picture book as a multimodal work of art that encourages the development of 
multimodal literacy in children (Haramija ­ Batič 2013).
Child Reader - Between an Oral Fairy Tale and a Native Picture Book 
The introduction of the oral fairy tale into the system of children’s literature, 
apart from genealogical and terminological issues, which are indispensable in the 
literary­theoretical study of the oral fairy tale, with which the term folk tale is 
often associated in Croatian literary science, opens the question of its suitability 
for children as recipients on the syntactic, semantic and ontological levels of nar­ rative substructure. As in children’s literature we witness “double, communicative 
(author­reader) and age­related (adult­child) otherness” (Hameršak­Zima 2015: 
95), communicative otherness in the form of an adult (grandparents, parents) as 
a possible mediator in reading/talking to children, determined by the context of 
the relevant time, but also by the individual cultural horizon of the mediator and 
the child. Bošković­Stulli (1963) pointed out the difference in the role of oral fairy 
tales for modern adult readers and children, with the conviction that they have a 
greater meaning in a child’s life: 
/.../folk tales in their heyday were an exuberant form of oral creativity with an important arti­ stic function in life, which is now gradually becoming a thing of the past; their characters and 
motifs inspired and still inspire literary creators in diverse and distinctive ways, so through 
2 Versions of the above­mentioned fairy tales are also known in other countries (see more about ways of 
transmitting fairy tales between nations in: Bošković Stulli 2006.; Vrkić 1997a, 1997b).

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
60 61
them the stories live on in contemporary culture; for children, stories have preserved their 
original charm until today; it’s all like that ­ but what can they say by themselves even today to 
an adult cultured reader of literature? To many, certainly nothing” (Bošković­Stulli 1963: 26).
Emphasizing the appropriateness of folk tales for children, their focus on chil­ dren’s recipients is evident in the words of the fairy tale collector of the Đakovo 
region ­ Milena Papratović: “`Short stories` are told in the village in the winter 
during spinning or conversing, grandmothers tell them to children, while young 
men tell them when they are herding cattle or pigs, or again by women when they 
are combing (plucking) feathers. ” (Papratović 2020: 12). This point of view, howe­ ver, does not give us the right to claim that the contemporary children’s implicit 
reader communicates with the world of oral fairy tales in a simple manner. The 
distant time frame from the thirties of the last century, when the stories were wri­ tten down, extends to the middle of the 19th century when dating, the time in 
which the grandmother of one of the most common storytellers lived, which is 
culturally significantly different from the present. Starting from a potentially inte­ rested children’s audience, respecting its contemporary repertoire and the horizon 
of expectations that make up social, cultural and historical norms (Majhut 2005), 
Mirko Ćurić, writer from Đakovo, together with a group of visual artists, initiated 
the “Đakovačka slikovnica” (“Đakovo’s Picture Book”) project in 2004, to bridge 
the cultural imaginarium. Starting from the contemporary “idea of   the child to 
whom he is addressing” (Majhut 2005: 74), he tried through the narrative and arti­ stic layer ­ “by collective authorship” (Hameršak­Zima 2015: 95) to preserve the 
Slavonic oral fairy tale innovated in the form of a native picture book, and to make 
the native cultural heritage of Đakovo close to the youngest readers.
3
 The editors 
of the reprints of Đakovo fairy tales had this in mind, whose narrative is enriched 
with illustrations by the young artist from Đakovo, Dajana Karas, and in which 
the original Slavonic language idiom is preserved. “It is Croatian heritage and a 
national treasure that today should be offered to everyone, especially young people 
and children, so that they too, like in the past, read them, and their grandmothers 
would tell stories to their children. ” (Svirac 2020:5­6). Authors of Đakovo picture 
books have solved the problem of bridging the “imaginarium of another time” 
(Francem 2020: 111) by dressing native oral stories in picture books, making them 
suitable for children, while preserving the narrative of Đakovo’s native heritage by 
implementing several intertextual transformation strategies. 
Intertextual Strategies in the Relationship Between Oral Fairy Tales and 
Native Picture Books 
Acknowledging the fact that a fairy tale and a picture book are two different 
artistic expressions of specific poetics, aware of the challenges that the transfer of 
the text of an oral fairy tale into a picture book contains, we focused the interpre­ tation on the comparison of the original text and the picture book. “If you want 
3 It is a series of about twenty picture books based on folk tales collected by Milena Papratović, the first doctor 
of ethnology in Croatia (Živaković Kerže 2011), who in 1936, while visiting the villages of Đakovo, collected 
about forty folk tales, thematically and structurally diverse, which saw their repeated edition in 2020.
(from contemporary reinterpretations of children’s literature classics, through pic­ ture books dealing with famous scientists and artists, with cultural heritage of the 
native area to those whose focus are Croatian folk tales, with greater or lesser litera­ ry­linguistic interventions), it is clear that in the typologically diverse picture books 
marked with cultural heritage contents, there is a larger part of those created on the 
basis of an oral fairy tale, the transformation of which creates a new verbal­visual 
medium, with all the challenges it carries a noticeable complex and demanding poe­ tics of the picture book. The picture books of the Đakovo region, originally collected 
and published in the thirties of the twentieth century, subsequently printed in the 
edition of the Đakovo cultural circle and the City of Đakovo as part of the “Sli­ kovnice Đakovačkih novina” (“Đakovo’s newspapers picture books”), with all the 
peculiarities of belonging to the “Slavonic literary model” (Ivon and Vrcić­Mataija 
2019) are exposed to such challenge. Therefore, starting from the oral fairy tale as a 
source text/hypotext (Genette 1997), embedded in the medium of a picture book, in 
this paper we deal with the ways of transferring oral literature into the new, author’s 
medium of a picture book primarily designed for children, with the aim of detecting 
intertextual transformation strategies in three narrative picture books of the Đakovo 
region: “Palčić” (“Thumbling”), “Mladoženja jež” (“Hedgehog Groom”) and “Hrabri 
pijetao” (“Brave Rooster”)
2
, with the relationship between the literary and artistic 
layers and models of preservation of the Đakovo’s (Slavonic) cultural heritage in the 
context of the contemporary (non)child reader, contributing to the understanding 
of the picture book as a multimodal work of art that encourages the development of 
multimodal literacy in children (Haramija ­ Batič 2013).
Child Reader - Between an Oral Fairy Tale and a Native Picture Book 
The introduction of the oral fairy tale into the system of children’s literature, 
apart from genealogical and terminological issues, which are indispensable in the 
literary­theoretical study of the oral fairy tale, with which the term folk tale is 
often associated in Croatian literary science, opens the question of its suitability 
for children as recipients on the syntactic, semantic and ontological levels of nar­ rative substructure. As in children’s literature we witness “double, communicative 
(author­reader) and age­related (adult­child) otherness” (Hameršak­Zima 2015: 
95), communicative otherness in the form of an adult (grandparents, parents) as 
a possible mediator in reading/talking to children, determined by the context of 
the relevant time, but also by the individual cultural horizon of the mediator and 
the child. Bošković­Stulli (1963) pointed out the difference in the role of oral fairy 
tales for modern adult readers and children, with the conviction that they have a 
greater meaning in a child’s life: 
/.../folk tales in their heyday were an exuberant form of oral creativity with an important arti­ stic function in life, which is now gradually becoming a thing of the past; their characters and 
motifs inspired and still inspire literary creators in diverse and distinctive ways, so through 
2 Versions of the above­mentioned fairy tales are also known in other countries (see more about ways of 
transmitting fairy tales between nations in: Bošković Stulli 2006.; Vrkić 1997a, 1997b).

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
62 63
from Propp’s and Lüthi’s designation of the poetics of the fairy tale with the intention 
of observing the way the author’ s writing is added to the oral literary discourse. Based 
on composition, structural determinations and syntax, Propp’s (1982) definition of 
a fairy tale does not include the necessity of wonder, but starts from the function as 
the bearer of the plot. For Lühti (according to Bošković­Stulli 2012), the poetics of a 
fairy tale is related to the way motifs are formed, and strangely, part of the action is 
“the ultimate expression of an abstract, isolating and sublimating style” (Bošković­ 
Stulli 2012: 283). They have in common the knowledge of the hero’s journey between 
worlds, from the initial lack to the happy ending, with miraculous helpers and gifts. 
“For Propp, in a fairy tale, the hero’s actions are important from the point of view 
of consequences, and not of his feelings. Lüthi observes that the hero’s feelings are 
expressed through action ­ which is partly similar to Propp, but still manifests seeing 
through a different lens: the composition is seen as inseparably connected with style” 
(Bošković­Stulli 2012: 285). Reading the narrative layer of the Đakovo’ s picture books 
in relation to the intertext of the oral fairy tale is on the track of noticing the hero’s 
positioning with regard to action and feeling. The shift of interest from the hero’s 
adventure to the sphere of his emotionality inevitably affects the transformation of 
the narrative style, and thus the change in the poetics of the fairy tale, which takes on 
the characteristics of an author’s, artistic fairy tale from an oral literary one, despite 
a high degree of intertextual equivalence. It is a stylistic transformation that did not 
disturb the interrelationship between the oral Đakovo’ s fairy tale and its realization in 
the form of a picture book, but instead created an interesting interplay, complemen­ ted by an artistic layer close to the contemporary child recipient. 
Slavonian “Palčić” (“Thumbling”)
Shifting the emphasis from the hero’s action to his emotionality is a key element 
in the stylistic, and therefore the reception, transformation realized in the narra­ tive layer of the picture book, on the trail of the poetics of “childhood” (Hameršak 
2011), not because of fear of experiencing a fairy tale, the fictionality of which the 
contemporary child recipient is used to, but because of the need to approach the 
contemporary culture of childhood. Proof of this is Thumbling, the youngest mem­ ber of the family, the only long­awaited child, a hero ­ a traveller, who in the original 
text of the Đakovo fairy tale collected in 1935­1936, when he grows up a bit but does 
not grow up, leaves home “because he has had enough, with his father and mother 
looking after him strictly, and because he wanted to see the world. ” (Papratović 2020: 
97). The hero, characterized by a lack of adventure, goes out into the world out of 
curiosity, just as the hero of Ćurić’s picture book does, with the addition “because 
he has had enough of being strictly watched over by his father and mother because 
he was small” (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006), which enhances the hero’s physicality close to 
the child recipient. The identity of the new text with the original text, combined with 
the author’s stylistic additions, favours balancing between complete citation and a 
shift to a new author’s discourse aimed at the child recipient, which is visible in the 
elaboration of the travel motif, contextualized in the context of the contemporary 
cultural imaginarium. The narrator’s heterodiegetic position, variable in focalization 
between the omniscient, appropriate “adult view” (Narančić Kovač 2015: 85) and the 
to make a picture book based on a fairy tale, then the text of the fairy tale will 
need to be paraphrased regularly. Only an appropriately paraphrased fairy tale 
can be a picture book” (Majhut and Batinić 2017: 39). Determining the procedu­ res for paraphrasing a fairy tale in a picture book presupposes the interpretation 
of intertextual transformation strategies in relation to the semantic and syntactic 
substructure of narrative and artistic narrations. Such starting point includes the 
analysis of language (through the relationship between dialectal idiom and stan­ dard language), the poetics of fairy tales (through the oral ­ author relationship), 
and the poetics of picture books (models of visual imitation of folklore artefacts). 
Most of the collected Croatian oral fairy tales retained the peculiarities of local 
language idioms, having preserved the charm of folk originality, about which 
Bošković­Stulli (1963) affirmatively wrote: 
They were all collectors of dialectal texts, and it is no coincidence that they were the ones: 
unencumbered by the need to contribute to a perfect literary language, striving to capture the 
dialectal speech as faithfully as possible, they probably and inadvertently felt that other charm 
of folk storytelling that springs not only from a fantastic fable, but also from the innocent­spon­ taneous spoken word, irregular and unrefined, yet irresistibly suggestive with its unmoulded 
syntax and fresh folk vocabulary, with which the adequate meaning of the text, the mood of 
the moment and personal intonation can be expressed to the end. (Bošković­Stulli 1963: 19).
The oral fairy tales written down by Milena Papratović also preserve the lingui­ stic characteristics of the language, additionally enhanced by the speaking and wri­ ting competence of the narrator in the Slavonic dialect. Kolenić (1997) additionally 
calls the speech of the Slavonian dialect Šokački, and one of its features, which are 
incorporated into the language of Đakovo’s fairy tales, is a diverse “ě” pronuncia­ tion reflex. The intertextual linguistic transformation from the Slavonic dialect to the 
language standard is evident in the picture books. Linguistic­stylistic transformation 
­ adapting the language to the modern children’s audience, while preserving part of 
the lexemes of the heritage character through the native lexicon, represents a kind 
of inversion twist ­ by transforming into a standard language, deviating from the 
native idiom, in which fairy tales were originally created, paradoxically, the stories do 
not lose their native layer. In terms of language, nativeness is partly preserved at the 
level of the lexicon, although in a smaller proportion than that represented in fairy 
tales. For example, the absence of dialectal lexemes: bostan, sajtlik, matorac, porci-
jon, was replaced by the standard, stylistically unmarked lexemes: vrt (garden), čašica 
(cup), pijetao (rooster), posuda (dish), while lexemes korito (trough), krmača garača 
(black sow) are preserved, and some other native lexemes were added as a function 
of approximation children’s readers of native heritage: žirovanje (acoring), čordaši 
(swineherders), svinjska čorda (herd of pigs). The concession of the native idiom to 
the standard language, with the mentioned linguistic transformations in which the 
linguistic­semantic cultural layer of Đakovo is partly inherited, introduces us to the 
stylistic­poetic transformations, observed through the relationship between the oral 
literature and the artistic poetics of the fairy tale, with the intention of observing 
intertextual strategies which, as a result of the intention to preserve the narrative of 
the prototext, with regard to the relationship between visual and narrative, ranges 
from quotation to paraphrase (Oraić­Tolić 2019), from imitation to transformation 
(Narančić Kovač and Zalar 2015). In the analysis of the mentioned strategies we start 

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
62 63
from Propp’s and Lüthi’s designation of the poetics of the fairy tale with the intention 
of observing the way the author’ s writing is added to the oral literary discourse. Based 
on composition, structural determinations and syntax, Propp’s (1982) definition of 
a fairy tale does not include the necessity of wonder, but starts from the function as 
the bearer of the plot. For Lühti (according to Bošković­Stulli 2012), the poetics of a 
fairy tale is related to the way motifs are formed, and strangely, part of the action is 
“the ultimate expression of an abstract, isolating and sublimating style” (Bošković­ 
Stulli 2012: 283). They have in common the knowledge of the hero’s journey between 
worlds, from the initial lack to the happy ending, with miraculous helpers and gifts. 
“For Propp, in a fairy tale, the hero’s actions are important from the point of view 
of consequences, and not of his feelings. Lüthi observes that the hero’s feelings are 
expressed through action ­ which is partly similar to Propp, but still manifests seeing 
through a different lens: the composition is seen as inseparably connected with style” 
(Bošković­Stulli 2012: 285). Reading the narrative layer of the Đakovo’ s picture books 
in relation to the intertext of the oral fairy tale is on the track of noticing the hero’s 
positioning with regard to action and feeling. The shift of interest from the hero’s 
adventure to the sphere of his emotionality inevitably affects the transformation of 
the narrative style, and thus the change in the poetics of the fairy tale, which takes on 
the characteristics of an author’s, artistic fairy tale from an oral literary one, despite 
a high degree of intertextual equivalence. It is a stylistic transformation that did not 
disturb the interrelationship between the oral Đakovo’ s fairy tale and its realization in 
the form of a picture book, but instead created an interesting interplay, complemen­ ted by an artistic layer close to the contemporary child recipient. 
Slavonian “Palčić” (“Thumbling”)
Shifting the emphasis from the hero’s action to his emotionality is a key element 
in the stylistic, and therefore the reception, transformation realized in the narra­ tive layer of the picture book, on the trail of the poetics of “childhood” (Hameršak 
2011), not because of fear of experiencing a fairy tale, the fictionality of which the 
contemporary child recipient is used to, but because of the need to approach the 
contemporary culture of childhood. Proof of this is Thumbling, the youngest mem­ ber of the family, the only long­awaited child, a hero ­ a traveller, who in the original 
text of the Đakovo fairy tale collected in 1935­1936, when he grows up a bit but does 
not grow up, leaves home “because he has had enough, with his father and mother 
looking after him strictly, and because he wanted to see the world. ” (Papratović 2020: 
97). The hero, characterized by a lack of adventure, goes out into the world out of 
curiosity, just as the hero of Ćurić’s picture book does, with the addition “because 
he has had enough of being strictly watched over by his father and mother because 
he was small” (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006), which enhances the hero’s physicality close to 
the child recipient. The identity of the new text with the original text, combined with 
the author’s stylistic additions, favours balancing between complete citation and a 
shift to a new author’s discourse aimed at the child recipient, which is visible in the 
elaboration of the travel motif, contextualized in the context of the contemporary 
cultural imaginarium. The narrator’s heterodiegetic position, variable in focalization 
between the omniscient, appropriate “adult view” (Narančić Kovač 2015: 85) and the 
to make a picture book based on a fairy tale, then the text of the fairy tale will 
need to be paraphrased regularly. Only an appropriately paraphrased fairy tale 
can be a picture book” (Majhut and Batinić 2017: 39). Determining the procedu­ res for paraphrasing a fairy tale in a picture book presupposes the interpretation 
of intertextual transformation strategies in relation to the semantic and syntactic 
substructure of narrative and artistic narrations. Such starting point includes the 
analysis of language (through the relationship between dialectal idiom and stan­ dard language), the poetics of fairy tales (through the oral ­ author relationship), 
and the poetics of picture books (models of visual imitation of folklore artefacts). 
Most of the collected Croatian oral fairy tales retained the peculiarities of local 
language idioms, having preserved the charm of folk originality, about which 
Bošković­Stulli (1963) affirmatively wrote: 
They were all collectors of dialectal texts, and it is no coincidence that they were the ones: 
unencumbered by the need to contribute to a perfect literary language, striving to capture the 
dialectal speech as faithfully as possible, they probably and inadvertently felt that other charm 
of folk storytelling that springs not only from a fantastic fable, but also from the innocent­spon­ taneous spoken word, irregular and unrefined, yet irresistibly suggestive with its unmoulded 
syntax and fresh folk vocabulary, with which the adequate meaning of the text, the mood of 
the moment and personal intonation can be expressed to the end. (Bošković­Stulli 1963: 19).
The oral fairy tales written down by Milena Papratović also preserve the lingui­ stic characteristics of the language, additionally enhanced by the speaking and wri­ ting competence of the narrator in the Slavonic dialect. Kolenić (1997) additionally 
calls the speech of the Slavonian dialect Šokački, and one of its features, which are 
incorporated into the language of Đakovo’s fairy tales, is a diverse “ě” pronuncia­ tion reflex. The intertextual linguistic transformation from the Slavonic dialect to the 
language standard is evident in the picture books. Linguistic­stylistic transformation 
­ adapting the language to the modern children’s audience, while preserving part of 
the lexemes of the heritage character through the native lexicon, represents a kind 
of inversion twist ­ by transforming into a standard language, deviating from the 
native idiom, in which fairy tales were originally created, paradoxically, the stories do 
not lose their native layer. In terms of language, nativeness is partly preserved at the 
level of the lexicon, although in a smaller proportion than that represented in fairy 
tales. For example, the absence of dialectal lexemes: bostan, sajtlik, matorac, porci-
jon, was replaced by the standard, stylistically unmarked lexemes: vrt (garden), čašica 
(cup), pijetao (rooster), posuda (dish), while lexemes korito (trough), krmača garača 
(black sow) are preserved, and some other native lexemes were added as a function 
of approximation children’s readers of native heritage: žirovanje (acoring), čordaši 
(swineherders), svinjska čorda (herd of pigs). The concession of the native idiom to 
the standard language, with the mentioned linguistic transformations in which the 
linguistic­semantic cultural layer of Đakovo is partly inherited, introduces us to the 
stylistic­poetic transformations, observed through the relationship between the oral 
literature and the artistic poetics of the fairy tale, with the intention of observing 
intertextual strategies which, as a result of the intention to preserve the narrative of 
the prototext, with regard to the relationship between visual and narrative, ranges 
from quotation to paraphrase (Oraić­Tolić 2019), from imitation to transformation 
(Narančić Kovač and Zalar 2015). In the analysis of the mentioned strategies we start 

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
64 65
time (physically and mentally), which further directs the picture book to children, 
whereby the act of children’s alcohol consumption, although humorously intoned 
in the fairy tale, functions extratextually as an act of prohibition.
As he was small, no one noticed him, and he entered the yard, where the pigs were being slau­ ghtered. Thumbling stops by the trough, in which there was meat for sausages, and there was 
a full glass of brandy on the trough. Thumbling’s parents always forbade him to drink and told 
him that it was not good for children. And he was always interested in the taste of brandy and 
why adults like to toast brandy and drink that drink that makes them happy, but they forbid 
it to children. Thumbling grabs the glass and drinks brandy. He drank fast so it burned in his 
throat and made him dizzy and he fell into the meat trough. (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006).
Just like the motif of boredom, the subsequently introduced motif of fear works 
as well as the invocation of parental protection, which confirms Thumbling’s chil­ dhood identity (grown up Palčić of the original text is deprived of such emotions): 
“Thumbling was afraid that the housewife would take the sausage in which he was 
trapped and throw it into the pan with hot oil. “Where are mom and dad now to 
help me,”’ he cried, fearing that he would be fried in a hot pan.” (Ćurić­Radoičić 
2006). The event of the Slavonian pig slaughter was additionally upgraded with the 
motif of song and joy and the making of sausages (the stylized recipe of which the 
child recipient has the opportunity to hear/read) as indispensable components of 
the native imaginarium: “He tried to shout, but he didn’t succeed because he was in 
that mixture, and people were talking and singing loudly, so they wouldn’t be able 
to hear him anyway. ” / “The butcher mixed him with meat, salt and pepper into the 
mixture with which they stuffed the sausage. ” (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006). Thumbling’s 
rescue from the sausage is delayed by the introduction of the character of a gypsy 
woman who, in Ćurić’s version, by avoiding the ethnic stereotype as a cultural 
image distant in time, transforms into a poor woman with a hungry child, whose 
socially vulnerable status is focused on the emotional world of the child recipient, 
which in the original text is reduced to action sequence with no emotion: 
And then some poor gypsy woman came, and the people gave her that piece of sausage, in which 
Thumbling was. The gypsy woman put the sausage in her bag and went on. (Papratović 2020: 97)/
And then some poor woman came. She asked people to give her a piece of meat to feed her 
hungry children. People gave her the same piece of sausage that Thumbling was in. The poor 
woman put the sausage in her bag and went on. (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006).
The return home in the oral literary narrative happens quickly, while in Ćurić’s 
text it is stylistically elaborated with emotions of joy within the family context, due 
to participation in the hero’s subsequent, albeit narratively silenced, retrospective 
narration in which “a hidden adult manipulates the child reader in order not to 
raise him and include him in a typically adult system of cultural and social values   
and behavioural norms... ” (Narančić Kovač 2015: 86). 
Everyone laughed at Thumbling because he didn’t like the brandy, but they listened with anxiety 
as he almost ended up in a hot pan or in a dog’ s mouth because he was trapped in a fresh sausage. 
Thumbling realized that his parents were right to prevent him from wandering around the world 
alone, where there are many dangers awaiting him. From then on, he listened well to his parents 
because he saw that they wanted him well. Do you listen to your parents? (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006).
hero’s view, complicates the language and style of the artistic, paraphrased fairy tale 
in the picture book, making it close to a child:
Thumbling was very interested in what wonders were hidden in the world. He knew that his 
parents often travelled to other villages and cities, and he thought that they were forbidding 
him to do that is because they didn’t love him enough. If they can travel the world by them­ selves, why can’t I, he often thought. Now it seemed to him that this was an opportunity to 
finally get to know that unknown, magical world. His mother and father searched for him 
until it was dark. They called him, but he didn’t want to answer them, hiding under a cabbage 
leaf. (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006)
The hero’s contextualization in the family discourse, in the original oral lite­ rary text, expressed by parental love (“Father and mother loved him very much 
and took care of him... ” Papratović 2020: 97), in Ćurić’s version is deprived of its 
emphasis, while the hero’s emotional state, refined by switching the heterodiegetic 
narrative focalization to the hero’s ­ by suggesting the child’s perspective, the hero’s 
self­initiated act of leaving home is justified by the need to get to know the magical 
unknown world. In addition, Ćurić’s Thumbling is also characterized by boredom, 
a motif that is absent in the prototext, as a characteristic close to a modern child: 
“He waited on the dry land for the rain to pass and got a little bored. ” / ” And the 
man ran away because he thought those were ghosts. Thumbling laughed, but soon 
he got bored again. ” (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006). The obstacles that the hero encounters 
when conquering an unknown space do not require of him to use magical powers 
or objects; he is saved by his physical “invisibility” to adults, which functions as 
the hero’s fantastic property. Encounters with an unknown man, woman and dog, 
as well as (mis)adventures with peasants, are devoid of the relationship of a classic 
conflict with an opponent. Thumbling emerges from adventures intact, protected 
by the gift of tininess as the halo of a “child” who, having eliminated the initial lack 
of adventure in his life, upon returning home realized the value of home and paren­ tal protection. In the context of the native imaginary, the unnamed space of the 
hero’s adventure, from the family home and garden, through the unknown forest, 
as a symbol of the loss of security, in the village ­ marked by a pig slaughterhouse, 
acquires a concrete ­ Slavonic (Đakovo) cultural code, present both at the level of 
text and prototext. This segment of the story, which culminates in the uncertainty 
of Thumbling’s fate, is further elaborated in the picture book, which uses intertex­ tual equivalence, through the strategy of imitation, to establish a citation dialogue, 
both according to the prototext and in relation to the cultural heritage of Đakovo, 
on the basis of which the author further elaborates the hero’s psychological profile 
in the context of the native imaginarium. To that we would add a dialogue with 
the contemporary culture of childhood in relation to obedience, prohibitions and 
subversion, which are absent in the original text, in which the hero, regardless of 
the fact that he is small, has grown up (“he has grown up, and yet he remains so 
small.” Papratović 2020: 97). The hero’s action (drinking brandy, falling into the 
trough) is not questioned in the oral narrative: “Thumbling stops at the trough, 
in which there was meat for sausages, and there was a bottle of brandy on the 
trough. Thumbling gets drunk and falls into the meat trough.” (Papratović 2020: 
97). Such a narrative point of view is understandable, because the hero, although 
he is small, is not a child. In Ćurić’s version, Thumbling functions as a child all the 

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
64 65
time (physically and mentally), which further directs the picture book to children, 
whereby the act of children’s alcohol consumption, although humorously intoned 
in the fairy tale, functions extratextually as an act of prohibition.
As he was small, no one noticed him, and he entered the yard, where the pigs were being slau­ ghtered. Thumbling stops by the trough, in which there was meat for sausages, and there was 
a full glass of brandy on the trough. Thumbling’s parents always forbade him to drink and told 
him that it was not good for children. And he was always interested in the taste of brandy and 
why adults like to toast brandy and drink that drink that makes them happy, but they forbid 
it to children. Thumbling grabs the glass and drinks brandy. He drank fast so it burned in his 
throat and made him dizzy and he fell into the meat trough. (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006).
Just like the motif of boredom, the subsequently introduced motif of fear works 
as well as the invocation of parental protection, which confirms Thumbling’s chil­ dhood identity (grown up Palčić of the original text is deprived of such emotions): 
“Thumbling was afraid that the housewife would take the sausage in which he was 
trapped and throw it into the pan with hot oil. “Where are mom and dad now to 
help me,”’ he cried, fearing that he would be fried in a hot pan.” (Ćurić­Radoičić 
2006). The event of the Slavonian pig slaughter was additionally upgraded with the 
motif of song and joy and the making of sausages (the stylized recipe of which the 
child recipient has the opportunity to hear/read) as indispensable components of 
the native imaginarium: “He tried to shout, but he didn’t succeed because he was in 
that mixture, and people were talking and singing loudly, so they wouldn’t be able 
to hear him anyway. ” / “The butcher mixed him with meat, salt and pepper into the 
mixture with which they stuffed the sausage. ” (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006). Thumbling’s 
rescue from the sausage is delayed by the introduction of the character of a gypsy 
woman who, in Ćurić’s version, by avoiding the ethnic stereotype as a cultural 
image distant in time, transforms into a poor woman with a hungry child, whose 
socially vulnerable status is focused on the emotional world of the child recipient, 
which in the original text is reduced to action sequence with no emotion: 
And then some poor gypsy woman came, and the people gave her that piece of sausage, in which 
Thumbling was. The gypsy woman put the sausage in her bag and went on. (Papratović 2020: 97)/
And then some poor woman came. She asked people to give her a piece of meat to feed her 
hungry children. People gave her the same piece of sausage that Thumbling was in. The poor 
woman put the sausage in her bag and went on. (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006).
The return home in the oral literary narrative happens quickly, while in Ćurić’s 
text it is stylistically elaborated with emotions of joy within the family context, due 
to participation in the hero’s subsequent, albeit narratively silenced, retrospective 
narration in which “a hidden adult manipulates the child reader in order not to 
raise him and include him in a typically adult system of cultural and social values   
and behavioural norms... ” (Narančić Kovač 2015: 86). 
Everyone laughed at Thumbling because he didn’t like the brandy, but they listened with anxiety 
as he almost ended up in a hot pan or in a dog’ s mouth because he was trapped in a fresh sausage. 
Thumbling realized that his parents were right to prevent him from wandering around the world 
alone, where there are many dangers awaiting him. From then on, he listened well to his parents 
because he saw that they wanted him well. Do you listen to your parents? (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006).
hero’s view, complicates the language and style of the artistic, paraphrased fairy tale 
in the picture book, making it close to a child:
Thumbling was very interested in what wonders were hidden in the world. He knew that his 
parents often travelled to other villages and cities, and he thought that they were forbidding 
him to do that is because they didn’t love him enough. If they can travel the world by them­ selves, why can’t I, he often thought. Now it seemed to him that this was an opportunity to 
finally get to know that unknown, magical world. His mother and father searched for him 
until it was dark. They called him, but he didn’t want to answer them, hiding under a cabbage 
leaf. (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006)
The hero’s contextualization in the family discourse, in the original oral lite­ rary text, expressed by parental love (“Father and mother loved him very much 
and took care of him... ” Papratović 2020: 97), in Ćurić’s version is deprived of its 
emphasis, while the hero’s emotional state, refined by switching the heterodiegetic 
narrative focalization to the hero’s ­ by suggesting the child’s perspective, the hero’s 
self­initiated act of leaving home is justified by the need to get to know the magical 
unknown world. In addition, Ćurić’s Thumbling is also characterized by boredom, 
a motif that is absent in the prototext, as a characteristic close to a modern child: 
“He waited on the dry land for the rain to pass and got a little bored. ” / ” And the 
man ran away because he thought those were ghosts. Thumbling laughed, but soon 
he got bored again. ” (Ćurić­Radoičić 2006). The obstacles that the hero encounters 
when conquering an unknown space do not require of him to use magical powers 
or objects; he is saved by his physical “invisibility” to adults, which functions as 
the hero’s fantastic property. Encounters with an unknown man, woman and dog, 
as well as (mis)adventures with peasants, are devoid of the relationship of a classic 
conflict with an opponent. Thumbling emerges from adventures intact, protected 
by the gift of tininess as the halo of a “child” who, having eliminated the initial lack 
of adventure in his life, upon returning home realized the value of home and paren­ tal protection. In the context of the native imaginary, the unnamed space of the 
hero’s adventure, from the family home and garden, through the unknown forest, 
as a symbol of the loss of security, in the village ­ marked by a pig slaughterhouse, 
acquires a concrete ­ Slavonic (Đakovo) cultural code, present both at the level of 
text and prototext. This segment of the story, which culminates in the uncertainty 
of Thumbling’s fate, is further elaborated in the picture book, which uses intertex­ tual equivalence, through the strategy of imitation, to establish a citation dialogue, 
both according to the prototext and in relation to the cultural heritage of Đakovo, 
on the basis of which the author further elaborates the hero’s psychological profile 
in the context of the native imaginarium. To that we would add a dialogue with 
the contemporary culture of childhood in relation to obedience, prohibitions and 
subversion, which are absent in the original text, in which the hero, regardless of 
the fact that he is small, has grown up (“he has grown up, and yet he remains so 
small.” Papratović 2020: 97). The hero’s action (drinking brandy, falling into the 
trough) is not questioned in the oral narrative: “Thumbling stops at the trough, 
in which there was meat for sausages, and there was a bottle of brandy on the 
trough. Thumbling gets drunk and falls into the meat trough.” (Papratović 2020: 
97). Such a narrative point of view is understandable, because the hero, although 
he is small, is not a child. In Ćurić’s version, Thumbling functions as a child all the 

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
66 67
and hen) and have their opponents. Finally, being born as a long­desired child, Thu ­ mbling and the hedgehog share some common traits: both willingly move away from 
home, but unlike Thumbling, who does not announce his departure to his parents, 
the hedgehog leaves with their approval ­ into the forest. In addition to the emotional 
one, the beginning of the narrative in the fairy tale is contextualized into the material 
discourse of the desired child (“There once were an old man and a woman, and they 
had no one. The old man was sad that he had no children, so he said to the woman, 
to whom would he leave the house and the land, it would be good if the woman 
gave birth, even if it were a hedgehog. ” Papratović 2020: 10), while the beginning of 
the narrative in the picture book is further elaborated stylistically and linguistically, 
thanks to which the characters of the old man and woman, emotionally profiled, 
acquire a parental identity, enhanced by a religious but material world view:
 
There once were an old man and a woman, and they had nobody. The lived a nice life, but they 
were sad. The old man was sad because they had no children. “To whom will we leave all that 
we’ve acquired” he used to say to the woman. They had a lot of land, a forest, a nice house. 
“God didn’t let us have any children, ” answered the woman in a sad voice. At that moment a 
hedgehog, accompanied by two small hedgehogs, passed through their yard. “If only we had 
our own child, even if it were like this hedgehog” , the old man wished. And what he wished for 
came true. His wife soon gave birth to a little hedgehog (Ćurić; Mocenni and Mocenni Beck).
By paraphrasing the text of the oral fairy tale, the story narrative of the picture 
book creates a new context, close to the modern child with whom the hero, even 
the hedgehog, corresponds in emotional portrayal, which is also contributed by the 
change of the narrative point of view and the expansion of dialogues with parents: 
I’ve already grown enough. I won’t just lie around, eat and drink. Give me something to do. ­ 
And what would you do ­ his father asked him. The hedgehog answered them, let them bake 
him an oilcake, and he would take their sow­blackie to the forest to feed her acorns... ­ Where 
are you going to take our blackie?! You’re not a herder, but a hedgehog! We’ll lose both, the 
sow and you. (Ćurić; Mocenni and Mocenni Beck).
Even in the picture book, the narrator does not change the order of events, but 
changes his attitude towards the story by adding a humorous and contemporary tone 
to it by introducing and/or replacing certain motifs. For example, the concept of her-
der, which is absent in the oral fairy tale, is introduced into the picture book, while 
the characters of the forester/forest ranger and the bishop from the oral fairy tale are 
replaced in the picture book by the terms forest manager/chief forester and pastor.
“The forester told the bishop that it is weird that he can’t find whose pigs they are, and he is 
not allowed to herd them. ” (Papratović 2020:43)
“The forest ranger got scared by the mysterious voice and ran away out of the forest. He 
informed the forest manager what had happened. “You got drunk again!” shouted the chief 
forester at the forest ranger... The forester told the pastor that a miracle had happened in the 
forest: they could not find whose those pigs were, and they were not allowed to herd them. ” 
(Ćurić; Mocenni and Mocenni Beck 2014).
Worry, fear and uncertainty, along with initial sadness and acquired joy, are 
the emotions with which the old man and woman confirm their parental identity, 
while the hedgehog (hero traveller), aware of the need to do useful work, realizes 
Positioned as a hero ­ an adventure seeker, Thumbling in both texts, through 
a self­initiated departure, goes through the process of initiation: from an unin­ formed and immature hero, with a lot of unknowns about the world to which 
he is headed, through the experiences of natively contextualized adventures, he 
transforms into a hero with an insight into the dangers of the unknown world; 
from a somewhat subversive, upon returning home, Thumbling becomes an obe­ dient hero, from which in both texts one can read the education aimed at a child 
recipient: in the prototext it is short and devoid of additional explanations, and in 
Ćurić’s text it is elaborated, adapted to a contemporary child recipient.
Unlike the narrative layer in which, as Sipe (1998) points out, words have a gre­ ater potential for transmitting information about time, the visual layer contains a 
greater potential for transmitting information about space. This is precisely why 
Radoičić’s illustrations are interesting; as they artistically describe Thumbling’s Sla­ vonian adventure, realized in a bright, playful and humorous handwriting, they 
are suitable for children in a naive artistic style that “looks very “childish” in exe­ cution and is distinguished by its two­dimensionality and flat painting approach. ” 
(Balić­Šimrak i Narančić Kovač 2011: 11). Complementarily supplementing the 
fictionality of the narrative discourse, the artistic layer of the picture book, through 
the intertextual process of imitation, brings the stylized Slavonic folklore heritage, 
which as an ethnographic intertext, is realized with the motifs of pig slaughter, 
family and rural environment. Alluding to the artefact of the Slavonian countryside 
and children’s folk costumes, the visual artist additionally contributes to the preser­ vation of Slavonian heritage values with his folkloristically articulated style.
Picture 1. Radoičić, Illustration of a pig 
slaughterhouse
Source: Ćurić, M., Radoičić, V. (2006)
Picture 2. Radoičić, Illustration of a happy ending
Source: Ćurić, M., Radoičić, V. (2006)
“Mladoženja jež” (“Hedgehog Groom”) – Slavonian Herder
Unlike the story about Thumbling, in “Mladoženja jež” (“Hedgehog Groom”) and 
“Hrabri pijetao” (“Brave Rooster”) fairy tales the heroes are animals ­ travellers who 
leave home by their own desire (hedgehog), or are chased away from home (rooster 

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
66 67
and hen) and have their opponents. Finally, being born as a long­desired child, Thu ­ mbling and the hedgehog share some common traits: both willingly move away from 
home, but unlike Thumbling, who does not announce his departure to his parents, 
the hedgehog leaves with their approval ­ into the forest. In addition to the emotional 
one, the beginning of the narrative in the fairy tale is contextualized into the material 
discourse of the desired child (“There once were an old man and a woman, and they 
had no one. The old man was sad that he had no children, so he said to the woman, 
to whom would he leave the house and the land, it would be good if the woman 
gave birth, even if it were a hedgehog. ” Papratović 2020: 10), while the beginning of 
the narrative in the picture book is further elaborated stylistically and linguistically, 
thanks to which the characters of the old man and woman, emotionally profiled, 
acquire a parental identity, enhanced by a religious but material world view:
 
There once were an old man and a woman, and they had nobody. The lived a nice life, but they 
were sad. The old man was sad because they had no children. “To whom will we leave all that 
we’ve acquired” he used to say to the woman. They had a lot of land, a forest, a nice house. 
“God didn’t let us have any children, ” answered the woman in a sad voice. At that moment a 
hedgehog, accompanied by two small hedgehogs, passed through their yard. “If only we had 
our own child, even if it were like this hedgehog” , the old man wished. And what he wished for 
came true. His wife soon gave birth to a little hedgehog (Ćurić; Mocenni and Mocenni Beck).
By paraphrasing the text of the oral fairy tale, the story narrative of the picture 
book creates a new context, close to the modern child with whom the hero, even 
the hedgehog, corresponds in emotional portrayal, which is also contributed by the 
change of the narrative point of view and the expansion of dialogues with parents: 
I’ve already grown enough. I won’t just lie around, eat and drink. Give me something to do. ­ 
And what would you do ­ his father asked him. The hedgehog answered them, let them bake 
him an oilcake, and he would take their sow­blackie to the forest to feed her acorns... ­ Where 
are you going to take our blackie?! You’re not a herder, but a hedgehog! We’ll lose both, the 
sow and you. (Ćurić; Mocenni and Mocenni Beck).
Even in the picture book, the narrator does not change the order of events, but 
changes his attitude towards the story by adding a humorous and contemporary tone 
to it by introducing and/or replacing certain motifs. For example, the concept of her-
der, which is absent in the oral fairy tale, is introduced into the picture book, while 
the characters of the forester/forest ranger and the bishop from the oral fairy tale are 
replaced in the picture book by the terms forest manager/chief forester and pastor.
“The forester told the bishop that it is weird that he can’t find whose pigs they are, and he is 
not allowed to herd them. ” (Papratović 2020:43)
“The forest ranger got scared by the mysterious voice and ran away out of the forest. He 
informed the forest manager what had happened. “You got drunk again!” shouted the chief 
forester at the forest ranger... The forester told the pastor that a miracle had happened in the 
forest: they could not find whose those pigs were, and they were not allowed to herd them. ” 
(Ćurić; Mocenni and Mocenni Beck 2014).
Worry, fear and uncertainty, along with initial sadness and acquired joy, are 
the emotions with which the old man and woman confirm their parental identity, 
while the hedgehog (hero traveller), aware of the need to do useful work, realizes 
Positioned as a hero ­ an adventure seeker, Thumbling in both texts, through 
a self­initiated departure, goes through the process of initiation: from an unin­ formed and immature hero, with a lot of unknowns about the world to which 
he is headed, through the experiences of natively contextualized adventures, he 
transforms into a hero with an insight into the dangers of the unknown world; 
from a somewhat subversive, upon returning home, Thumbling becomes an obe­ dient hero, from which in both texts one can read the education aimed at a child 
recipient: in the prototext it is short and devoid of additional explanations, and in 
Ćurić’s text it is elaborated, adapted to a contemporary child recipient.
Unlike the narrative layer in which, as Sipe (1998) points out, words have a gre­ ater potential for transmitting information about time, the visual layer contains a 
greater potential for transmitting information about space. This is precisely why 
Radoičić’s illustrations are interesting; as they artistically describe Thumbling’s Sla­ vonian adventure, realized in a bright, playful and humorous handwriting, they 
are suitable for children in a naive artistic style that “looks very “childish” in exe­ cution and is distinguished by its two­dimensionality and flat painting approach. ” 
(Balić­Šimrak i Narančić Kovač 2011: 11). Complementarily supplementing the 
fictionality of the narrative discourse, the artistic layer of the picture book, through 
the intertextual process of imitation, brings the stylized Slavonic folklore heritage, 
which as an ethnographic intertext, is realized with the motifs of pig slaughter, 
family and rural environment. Alluding to the artefact of the Slavonian countryside 
and children’s folk costumes, the visual artist additionally contributes to the preser­ vation of Slavonian heritage values with his folkloristically articulated style.
Picture 1. Radoičić, Illustration of a pig 
slaughterhouse
Source: Ćurić, M., Radoičić, V. (2006)
Picture 2. Radoičić, Illustration of a happy ending
Source: Ćurić, M., Radoičić, V. (2006)
“Mladoženja jež” (“Hedgehog Groom”) – Slavonian Herder
Unlike the story about Thumbling, in “Mladoženja jež” (“Hedgehog Groom”) and 
“Hrabri pijetao” (“Brave Rooster”) fairy tales the heroes are animals ­ travellers who 
leave home by their own desire (hedgehog), or are chased away from home (rooster 

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
68 69
Picture 3. Mocenni i Mocenni Beck: Illustration  
of oaks and pigs
Source: Ćurić, M.; Mocenni, Mocenni Beck (2014)
Picture 4. Mocenni i Mocenni Beck: Illustration of 
the transformation of a hedgehog into a young man
Source: Ćurić, M.; Mocenni, Mocenni Beck (2014)
“Hrabri pijetao” (“Brave Rooster”) – Guardian of Golden Ducats
As with the previous picture books, the narrative of the Brave Rooster, elaborated in 
relation to the oral prototext, is linguistically and stylistically adapted to the contempo­ rary child recipient by approaching the poetics of an artistic fairy tale, which is evident 
in the compositional features, starting from the introduction, through the narrative 
gradation of the plot with a delayed culmination, devoid of scenes of violence until 
the expected happy ending, shaped by the narrative form in the function of invoking 
family harmony. The poetically elaborated introduction in the narrative layer of the 
picture book serves the purpose of material, social and emotional contextualization of 
the characters of the old man and woman, which is absent in the prototext of the oral 
fairy tale, in which the action, designed in the form of a list, flows faster:
“There were an old man and an old woman, and they had a rooster and a hen. The old man 
and the old woman took good care of each other, but one day they argued and split up. The 
old man took the rooster, and the old woman took the hen. ” (Papratović 2020: 49)
“In a village behind seven mountains and seven seas, there lived a poor old man and a 
woman. Apart from the dilapidated house their only possessions were a rooster and a hen. 
The hen laid an egg every day and that was their most important food.. The old man and 
woman got along well, but one day the hen didn’t lay an egg, so they had a fight. They decided 
to divide their property. Each got a room in the house, and the old man got the rooster, and 
the old woman got the hen. ” (Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011)
Spatial motifs (small house, small room), characterized by a fairy­tale poetics of 
indeterminacy and the semantics of property and family status, linguistically for­ med by diminutive forms, close to children’s language, elaborate the cause of the 
his identity by going to the forest ­ a native space that simultaneously functions 
as a place to preserve cultural heritage, but also as a place to gain the hero’s power 
based on the acquisition of responsibility. On the basis of the universal motifs of 
the fairy tale, the Slavonic native narrative is strongly emphasized through the 
visually stylized spatial topos of the artistically realized oak forest and local images 
of acorns and acorns that function as a means to gain the hero’s power. 
”The old woman baked an oilcake, the hedgehog put the oilcake in a bag, sat behind the 
sow’s ear, and they went into the forest. Blackie and the hedgehog stayed in the forest for 
months, and during that time she became pregnant and gave birth to many piglets. There was 
a herd of pigs that lived in the forest, and the hedgehog took care of them.“ (Ćurić, Mocenni, 
Mocenni Beck, 2014). 
He is depicted as a skilful herder, native hero of his blackie, he holds them 
together and brings them home as well towed pigs.
4
 
“He gathered the pigs, sat down again on the old blackie behind her ear and headed for his 
home. When he came home, all his pigs could not fit in the yard, but had to stay on the street, 
because there we so many of them. The old man and woman were amazed by the miracle, and 
even more so when the hedgehog told them to bake him an oilcake and that the king must 
give him his daughter as a wife. ” (Ćurić, Mocenni, Mocenni Beck 2014).
In the meantime, outwitting the forester, the pastor/bishop, powerful lords and 
ultimately the king himself, he deservedly wins the hand of his daughter, who, 
due to impatience and frivolity, postpones his permanent transformation into a 
man. “So the hedgehog lived happily with his wife, having been a hedgehog during 
the day and a man at night, that there was no one more beautiful than him in the 
world. The king’s daughter was happy, but she still wanted him to be a man so 
at daytime as at night.” (Ćurić, Mocenni, Mocenni Beck 2014). The subsequent 
episode functions as an act of redemption for the hero’s wife and his additional 
positioning as a pater famillias, whose power he gains in ­ a distant forest. Their 
reunion cancels the spell ­ the hedgehog becomes a man for good, and the stere­ otypical ending, unchanged in both the texts, retains the oral literary humorous 
narrative pattern. “They lived happily for a long time and had many children. 
This is where the story ends, happily ever after just like he intends.” (Ćurić, 
Mocenni, Mocenni Beck 2014).
Illustrators Mocenni and Mocenni Beck have shown in a specific way the fairy 
tale world of the old Slavonian oak forest, characters and events narrated in the 
picture book. Using the collage art technique, they incorporated the Slavonic cul­ tural code by choosing the appropriate texture of patterns from traditional koperti 
(blankets), tablecloths and ponjavaca (blankets) as Slavonic folklore artefacts, 
localizing the literary narrative in the Slavonic native space. The native layer of the 
picture book was additionally preserved with the intertextual strategy of imitation 
of cultural heritage, realized with signals of visual intertext. 
4 In Slavonia, the breeding of black pigs, an autochthonous breed, is a traditional branch of livestock pro­ duction. The swineherders (čordaši) took them to forest grazing ­ acoring. They would stay in the forest 
from early spring to late autumn, so the piglets would return in late autumn like fattened pigs.

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
68 69
Picture 3. Mocenni i Mocenni Beck: Illustration  
of oaks and pigs
Source: Ćurić, M.; Mocenni, Mocenni Beck (2014)
Picture 4. Mocenni i Mocenni Beck: Illustration of 
the transformation of a hedgehog into a young man
Source: Ćurić, M.; Mocenni, Mocenni Beck (2014)
“Hrabri pijetao” (“Brave Rooster”) – Guardian of Golden Ducats
As with the previous picture books, the narrative of the Brave Rooster, elaborated in 
relation to the oral prototext, is linguistically and stylistically adapted to the contempo­ rary child recipient by approaching the poetics of an artistic fairy tale, which is evident 
in the compositional features, starting from the introduction, through the narrative 
gradation of the plot with a delayed culmination, devoid of scenes of violence until 
the expected happy ending, shaped by the narrative form in the function of invoking 
family harmony. The poetically elaborated introduction in the narrative layer of the 
picture book serves the purpose of material, social and emotional contextualization of 
the characters of the old man and woman, which is absent in the prototext of the oral 
fairy tale, in which the action, designed in the form of a list, flows faster:
“There were an old man and an old woman, and they had a rooster and a hen. The old man 
and the old woman took good care of each other, but one day they argued and split up. The 
old man took the rooster, and the old woman took the hen. ” (Papratović 2020: 49)
“In a village behind seven mountains and seven seas, there lived a poor old man and a 
woman. Apart from the dilapidated house their only possessions were a rooster and a hen. 
The hen laid an egg every day and that was their most important food.. The old man and 
woman got along well, but one day the hen didn’t lay an egg, so they had a fight. They decided 
to divide their property. Each got a room in the house, and the old man got the rooster, and 
the old woman got the hen. ” (Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011)
Spatial motifs (small house, small room), characterized by a fairy­tale poetics of 
indeterminacy and the semantics of property and family status, linguistically for­ med by diminutive forms, close to children’s language, elaborate the cause of the 
his identity by going to the forest ­ a native space that simultaneously functions 
as a place to preserve cultural heritage, but also as a place to gain the hero’s power 
based on the acquisition of responsibility. On the basis of the universal motifs of 
the fairy tale, the Slavonic native narrative is strongly emphasized through the 
visually stylized spatial topos of the artistically realized oak forest and local images 
of acorns and acorns that function as a means to gain the hero’s power. 
”The old woman baked an oilcake, the hedgehog put the oilcake in a bag, sat behind the 
sow’s ear, and they went into the forest. Blackie and the hedgehog stayed in the forest for 
months, and during that time she became pregnant and gave birth to many piglets. There was 
a herd of pigs that lived in the forest, and the hedgehog took care of them.“ (Ćurić, Mocenni, 
Mocenni Beck, 2014). 
He is depicted as a skilful herder, native hero of his blackie, he holds them 
together and brings them home as well towed pigs.
4
 
“He gathered the pigs, sat down again on the old blackie behind her ear and headed for his 
home. When he came home, all his pigs could not fit in the yard, but had to stay on the street, 
because there we so many of them. The old man and woman were amazed by the miracle, and 
even more so when the hedgehog told them to bake him an oilcake and that the king must 
give him his daughter as a wife. ” (Ćurić, Mocenni, Mocenni Beck 2014).
In the meantime, outwitting the forester, the pastor/bishop, powerful lords and 
ultimately the king himself, he deservedly wins the hand of his daughter, who, 
due to impatience and frivolity, postpones his permanent transformation into a 
man. “So the hedgehog lived happily with his wife, having been a hedgehog during 
the day and a man at night, that there was no one more beautiful than him in the 
world. The king’s daughter was happy, but she still wanted him to be a man so 
at daytime as at night.” (Ćurić, Mocenni, Mocenni Beck 2014). The subsequent 
episode functions as an act of redemption for the hero’s wife and his additional 
positioning as a pater famillias, whose power he gains in ­ a distant forest. Their 
reunion cancels the spell ­ the hedgehog becomes a man for good, and the stere­ otypical ending, unchanged in both the texts, retains the oral literary humorous 
narrative pattern. “They lived happily for a long time and had many children. 
This is where the story ends, happily ever after just like he intends.” (Ćurić, 
Mocenni, Mocenni Beck 2014).
Illustrators Mocenni and Mocenni Beck have shown in a specific way the fairy 
tale world of the old Slavonian oak forest, characters and events narrated in the 
picture book. Using the collage art technique, they incorporated the Slavonic cul­ tural code by choosing the appropriate texture of patterns from traditional koperti 
(blankets), tablecloths and ponjavaca (blankets) as Slavonic folklore artefacts, 
localizing the literary narrative in the Slavonic native space. The native layer of the 
picture book was additionally preserved with the intertextual strategy of imitation 
of cultural heritage, realized with signals of visual intertext. 
4 In Slavonia, the breeding of black pigs, an autochthonous breed, is a traditional branch of livestock pro­ duction. The swineherders (čordaši) took them to forest grazing ­ acoring. They would stay in the forest 
from early spring to late autumn, so the piglets would return in late autumn like fattened pigs.

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
70 71
“Woman, woman, put on woollen covers, I’m bringing you golden ducats! Old 
woman spread out a large cover and the hen shook out a lot of sand and only one 
ducat. The old woman got angry and started to beat the chicken again.” Ćurić; 
Vladić­Maštruko 2011). In accordance with the elaborated composition and style 
of the adapted text of the oral fairy tale, the ending of the narrative, shaped by 
the storytelling form, functions as an upgrade of the emotional world of the cha­ racters, who have matured in the knowledge of the value of family togetherness: 
“­ We have argued and divided a lot, it’s time to reconcile. I will give the ducats 
and you the eggs, and everything will be fine, as it was. The old woman agreed, 
and from that day on, the old man, woman, rooster and the hen lived together in 
happiness and well­being” (Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011).
The intertextual strategy of paraphrasing the narrative layer of the picture book 
in the pictorial layer is enriched with visual comments of the story, adding pre­ viously denied meanings to it by imitating Slavonian native motifs ­ artefacts of 
Đakovo’s golden embroidery. We are talking about the collage process as a form 
of “transsemiotic citation, in which reality, the subject material world itself, is 
quoted in art” (Oraić­Tolić 2019: 177). Đakovo’s golden embroidery as a visual 
quote belongs to the factual mode, and is functionally marked as a cultural heri­ tage. Illustrator Vladić­Maštruko, wanting to create a feeling of spaciousness, used 
layout (Nikolajeva 2012) – showing the scene on two sides. The atmosphere of the 
Šokački’s motifs (gold embroidery, ducats, acorn motif, men’s and women’s folk 
costumes, the interior of the Šokačka’s house) underline the ethnographic layer of 
the story, which is supported by the textual background designed like a jute sack. 
The motif of the ducat, present as a symbol of prosperity and wealth, to which the 
heroes of the story aspire, is linked to the artistic expression that completely com­ plements the story with Đakovo’s cultural codes as expressions of folklore cultural 
heritage. 
Picture 5. M. Vladić-Maštruko: Illustration of a hen and a rooster decorated with native motifs
Source: Ćurić, M., Vladić-Maštruko, M. (2011)
quarrel between adults, where the motif of the beating, as a trigger of the rooster’s 
departure into the world, is present in both artistic media. The bearers of plot and 
denouement in both literary narratives are, therefore, anthropomorphized animal 
characters, again more emotionally elaborated in the narrative layer of the picture 
book compared to the oral prototext, which also shifts the emphasis from action to 
feeling. The initial rooster’s boredom (“The rooster got tired of the beatings and he 
ran away into the world. ” Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011), through the development 
of the plot through encounters with potentially dangerous companions (fox, wolf, 
pond), is upgraded with justified caution (“Everyone knows that foxes eat roosters 
and I’m not yet ready to become someone’s meal. ” Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011) 
and fear, but also a willingness to make unusual friendships that will turn out to be 
fully justified, which is new in relation to the prototext of an oral fairy tale, which 
confirms the thesis about the paraphrasing of the fairy tale in the picture book:
“So they went on a journey and they met a wolf and agreed with him that all three would 
travel together. ” (Papratović 2020:49)
“On the second day they met a wolf and hid in a hole in a tree, fearing that it would eat them. 
The wolf promised them that he would not eat them, but invited them to travel with him, 
because he needed such companions to complete a difficult task with the king himself, and 
when they completed the task, a rich reward would await them. After much persuasion, the 
fox and the rooster agree, so to the astonishment of the entire forest, a strange group sets off 
on their journey: a rooster, a fox and a wolf!” (Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011).
In both texts, the focus on the king’ s court figures as the hero’ s search for wealth, 
which is reached later, by overcoming obstacles with the help of newly acquired 
friends ­ helpers, leaving an impression on the king and the world about his fan­ tastic qualities: “Now the king was seriously worried: ­ What should I do with that 
miracle­working rooster that gets out of every trouble?” (Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 
2011). 
Getting out of every trouble, in the end even from the most guarded chamber 
in the castle, ambiently evoked by the stereotypical fairy­tale spatial imaginary 
of a room full of gold, located in the text of the picture book “behind seven iron 
locks and seven oak doors” , the rooster proves courage, which is subsequently built 
on by happiness in the form of material wealth, exemplified by the Slavonic heri­ tage code ­ golden ducats and woollen covers , additionally underlined by Vladić­ 
Maštruko’s folkloristic illustrations: “Cock­a­doodle­doo old man, bring woollen 
covers, I’m bringing you golden ducats!” (Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011). Parting 
with friends ­ helpers, which is completely absent in the oral prototext, is again a 
function of the hero’s emotional upgrade: 
“The rooster went home to the old man, while aunt Fox and wolf stayed in the forest” (Pap­ ratović 2020:49)
“The rooster had enough of adventures, so he went to his house, while the fox and the wolf 
stayed in the forest. At parting the wolf gave them gold as a sign of gratitude for saving him 
from danger. ” (Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011). 
By transforming the hen, originally situated in the space of the home, into a tra­ veller ­ a seeker of potential treasure, the fable is directed to a humorous discourse, 
motivated by the idea of   deceived expectations:

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
70 71
“Woman, woman, put on woollen covers, I’m bringing you golden ducats! Old 
woman spread out a large cover and the hen shook out a lot of sand and only one 
ducat. The old woman got angry and started to beat the chicken again.” Ćurić; 
Vladić­Maštruko 2011). In accordance with the elaborated composition and style 
of the adapted text of the oral fairy tale, the ending of the narrative, shaped by 
the storytelling form, functions as an upgrade of the emotional world of the cha­ racters, who have matured in the knowledge of the value of family togetherness: 
“­ We have argued and divided a lot, it’s time to reconcile. I will give the ducats 
and you the eggs, and everything will be fine, as it was. The old woman agreed, 
and from that day on, the old man, woman, rooster and the hen lived together in 
happiness and well­being” (Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011).
The intertextual strategy of paraphrasing the narrative layer of the picture book 
in the pictorial layer is enriched with visual comments of the story, adding pre­ viously denied meanings to it by imitating Slavonian native motifs ­ artefacts of 
Đakovo’s golden embroidery. We are talking about the collage process as a form 
of “transsemiotic citation, in which reality, the subject material world itself, is 
quoted in art” (Oraić­Tolić 2019: 177). Đakovo’s golden embroidery as a visual 
quote belongs to the factual mode, and is functionally marked as a cultural heri­ tage. Illustrator Vladić­Maštruko, wanting to create a feeling of spaciousness, used 
layout (Nikolajeva 2012) – showing the scene on two sides. The atmosphere of the 
Šokački’s motifs (gold embroidery, ducats, acorn motif, men’s and women’s folk 
costumes, the interior of the Šokačka’s house) underline the ethnographic layer of 
the story, which is supported by the textual background designed like a jute sack. 
The motif of the ducat, present as a symbol of prosperity and wealth, to which the 
heroes of the story aspire, is linked to the artistic expression that completely com­ plements the story with Đakovo’s cultural codes as expressions of folklore cultural 
heritage. 
Picture 5. M. Vladić-Maštruko: Illustration of a hen and a rooster decorated with native motifs
Source: Ćurić, M., Vladić-Maštruko, M. (2011)
quarrel between adults, where the motif of the beating, as a trigger of the rooster’s 
departure into the world, is present in both artistic media. The bearers of plot and 
denouement in both literary narratives are, therefore, anthropomorphized animal 
characters, again more emotionally elaborated in the narrative layer of the picture 
book compared to the oral prototext, which also shifts the emphasis from action to 
feeling. The initial rooster’s boredom (“The rooster got tired of the beatings and he 
ran away into the world. ” Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011), through the development 
of the plot through encounters with potentially dangerous companions (fox, wolf, 
pond), is upgraded with justified caution (“Everyone knows that foxes eat roosters 
and I’m not yet ready to become someone’s meal. ” Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011) 
and fear, but also a willingness to make unusual friendships that will turn out to be 
fully justified, which is new in relation to the prototext of an oral fairy tale, which 
confirms the thesis about the paraphrasing of the fairy tale in the picture book:
“So they went on a journey and they met a wolf and agreed with him that all three would 
travel together. ” (Papratović 2020:49)
“On the second day they met a wolf and hid in a hole in a tree, fearing that it would eat them. 
The wolf promised them that he would not eat them, but invited them to travel with him, 
because he needed such companions to complete a difficult task with the king himself, and 
when they completed the task, a rich reward would await them. After much persuasion, the 
fox and the rooster agree, so to the astonishment of the entire forest, a strange group sets off 
on their journey: a rooster, a fox and a wolf!” (Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011).
In both texts, the focus on the king’ s court figures as the hero’ s search for wealth, 
which is reached later, by overcoming obstacles with the help of newly acquired 
friends ­ helpers, leaving an impression on the king and the world about his fan­ tastic qualities: “Now the king was seriously worried: ­ What should I do with that 
miracle­working rooster that gets out of every trouble?” (Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 
2011). 
Getting out of every trouble, in the end even from the most guarded chamber 
in the castle, ambiently evoked by the stereotypical fairy­tale spatial imaginary 
of a room full of gold, located in the text of the picture book “behind seven iron 
locks and seven oak doors” , the rooster proves courage, which is subsequently built 
on by happiness in the form of material wealth, exemplified by the Slavonic heri­ tage code ­ golden ducats and woollen covers , additionally underlined by Vladić­ 
Maštruko’s folkloristic illustrations: “Cock­a­doodle­doo old man, bring woollen 
covers, I’m bringing you golden ducats!” (Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011). Parting 
with friends ­ helpers, which is completely absent in the oral prototext, is again a 
function of the hero’s emotional upgrade: 
“The rooster went home to the old man, while aunt Fox and wolf stayed in the forest” (Pap­ ratović 2020:49)
“The rooster had enough of adventures, so he went to his house, while the fox and the wolf 
stayed in the forest. At parting the wolf gave them gold as a sign of gratitude for saving him 
from danger. ” (Ćurić; Vladić­Maštruko 2011). 
By transforming the hen, originally situated in the space of the home, into a tra­ veller ­ a seeker of potential treasure, the fable is directed to a humorous discourse, 
motivated by the idea of   deceived expectations:

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
72 73
of life (“Palčić” /”Thumbling”) is not neglected. In this way, the hero of the fairy tale 
is refined psychologically, and there is a shift away from the oral literary flatness 
of the hero, and a character profile is acquired, to which the contemporary child 
recipient can relate. The ontological value of the native stories was preserved, but it 
underwent its modification by highlighting the heroes of the emotional world in the 
form of promoting the idea of   the beauty and fun of a natively contextualized fairy­ 
tale adventure, whose artistic layer complementarily leads a dialogue with the lite­ rary and cultural Slavonic code. This establishes an interesting relationship between 
image and text, which in the three selected picture books varies between factual and 
fictional. In this sense the Đakovo’s picture books fulfilled their cultural function; 
through the representation of a paraphrased text from another, shared culture and 
an “innovated literary canon” are presented. (Oraić­Tolić 2019: 99). Through the 
combination of old and new, traditional and contemporary cultural imaginary, a 
spiritual balance and appropriateness for the contemporary child recipient was achi­ eved in the context of the preservation of heritage values.   summarized in the correct 
and justly ordered world, on which the original narrative of the oral fairy tale was 
created. Ultimately, the interpretation of Đakovo’s picture books is a contribution to 
the cultural reading of art books, aimed at preserving the value of native heritage.
Povzetek
Članek interpretira proces prenosa ustne pravljice v medij ljudske slikanice, nje­ gov namen pa je opazovanje načina ohranjanja ustnega izročila v primerkih dela 
književnega opusa Mirka Ćurića, hrvaškega pisca iz Đakova. Analiza obravnava 
tri ljudske slikanice, nastale z interpolacijo ljudskega izročila Đakova (zbranega 
leta 1936 – Papratović) in v sodelovanju z likovnimi umetniki (Vjekoslav Radoi­ čić, Gualtiero Mocenni in Simone Mocenni Beck, Manuela Vladić Maštruko). To 
so Palčić (Thumbling), Mladoženja jež (Hedgehog Groom) in Hrabri pijetao (Brave 
Rooster). Izhajajoč iz ljudske pravljice kot izvirnega besedila (Genette 1997), vde­ lane v medij slikanice, članek interpretira metodo prenosa ustnega književnega 
besedila v avtorjev umetniški medij slikanice, namenjen v prvi vrsti otrokom. 
Medbesedilne transformacijske strategije ter odnos med literarnimi in likovnimi 
plastmi so v članku analizirani z namenom opazovanja modela ohranjanja đako­ vske (slavonske) kulturne dediščine v kontekstu sodobnega (ne)otroškega bralca. 
To izhodišče vključuje analizo jezika (na podlagi odnosa med narečnim idiomom 
in standardnim jezikom), analizo poetike pravljic (skozi odnos med ustnim izro­ čilom in avtorjem) in analizo poetike slikanice (modeli likovnega posnemanja 
ljudskih artefaktov). Izbira postopkov parafraziranja pravljice v slikanico pred­ postavlja interpretacijo medbesedilnih transformacijskih strategij v odnosu do 
semantične in sintaktične substrukture verbalne in likovne pripovedi. Analiza 
omenjenih strategij izhaja iz Proppove in Lüthijeve definicije poetike pravljice z 
namenom opazovati način spajanja avtorjeve pisave z diskurzom ustnega literar­ nega izročila. V tem primeru gre za stilsko preobrazbo, ki ni posegla v odnos med 
pravljičnim ustnim izročilom Đakova in njegovim prenosom v obliko slikanice; 
nasprotno, ustvarila je zanimivo medigro, dopolnjeno z likovno vsebino, ki je 
blizu sodobnemu otroškemu prejemniku. Premik poudarka od junakovih dejanj 
Picture 6. M. Vladić-Maštruko: 
Representation of grandfather and 
grandmother in the Šokačka’s folk 
costumes
Source: Izvor: Ćurić, M., Vladić-Maštruko, M. (2011)
Conclusion 
By transferring an oral fairy tale to the medium of a picture book, certain inter­ textual connections were established, but also an intercultural dialogue with the 
texts of oral fairy tales as source texts, collected in Slavonia, in the vicinity of Đakovo, 
in the thirties of the twentieth century, but also with Slavonian, Đakovo’s cultural 
heritage. Printed about eighty years after the first writing, the Đakovo’s fairy tales in 
the form of a picture book experienced their paraphrase. Through the implemen­ tation of intertextual transformation strategies, realized through linguistic, literary 
and artistic stylistic procedures, the narrative layer of all the three selected picture 
books experienced a change in the poetics of the stories in relation to the original 
texts, and through the artistic addition of heritage artefacts, the picture books were 
additionally contextualized natively. The shift in the language from the local idiom 
to the standard form, adapted to the modern child recipient, along with the pre­ servation and/or linguistic reinterpretation of Slavonic ethnological identity, and at 
the level of local, native lexemes, is a function of adaptation to modern children’s 
expectations. By transferring the text of an oral fairy tale into the guise of a picture 
book, the stories were visualized, but also there was the “childization” (Hameršak 
2011) of the fairy tale as a genre “which in oral communication until then was aimed 
at children and adults, and sometimes only at adults. ” (Hameršak 2011: 64). Namely, 
through the linguistic and stylistic reinterpretation of the old fairy tale, the emphasis 
is placed on the hero of the story, but also on the implicit reader ­ a child, with all 
the characteristics close to the culture of modern childhood, and even a subversive 
child, characterized by a desire for adventure. Narrative closeness to the contempo­ rary culture of childhood is a sign of emphasized emotionality (which is absent in 
the original texts): from children’ s boredom, through fear of vulnerability, joy, mirth. 
In the paraphrased author’s versions of oral fairy tales, the emotionally upgraded 
identity of the fairy­tale hero additionally upgraded the hero’ s identity by confirming 
him as a child. Despite the emphasis on the hero’s adventure, realized by the jour­ ney, the act of return, embodied in the acquired wealth (“Hrabri pijetao” / “Brave 
Rooster”), the kingdom (“Mladoženja jež” / “Hedgehog Groom”) or the knowledge 

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
72 73
of life (“Palčić” /”Thumbling”) is not neglected. In this way, the hero of the fairy tale 
is refined psychologically, and there is a shift away from the oral literary flatness 
of the hero, and a character profile is acquired, to which the contemporary child 
recipient can relate. The ontological value of the native stories was preserved, but it 
underwent its modification by highlighting the heroes of the emotional world in the 
form of promoting the idea of   the beauty and fun of a natively contextualized fairy­ 
tale adventure, whose artistic layer complementarily leads a dialogue with the lite­ rary and cultural Slavonic code. This establishes an interesting relationship between 
image and text, which in the three selected picture books varies between factual and 
fictional. In this sense the Đakovo’s picture books fulfilled their cultural function; 
through the representation of a paraphrased text from another, shared culture and 
an “innovated literary canon” are presented. (Oraić­Tolić 2019: 99). Through the 
combination of old and new, traditional and contemporary cultural imaginary, a 
spiritual balance and appropriateness for the contemporary child recipient was achi­ eved in the context of the preservation of heritage values.   summarized in the correct 
and justly ordered world, on which the original narrative of the oral fairy tale was 
created. Ultimately, the interpretation of Đakovo’s picture books is a contribution to 
the cultural reading of art books, aimed at preserving the value of native heritage.
Povzetek
Članek interpretira proces prenosa ustne pravljice v medij ljudske slikanice, nje­ gov namen pa je opazovanje načina ohranjanja ustnega izročila v primerkih dela 
književnega opusa Mirka Ćurića, hrvaškega pisca iz Đakova. Analiza obravnava 
tri ljudske slikanice, nastale z interpolacijo ljudskega izročila Đakova (zbranega 
leta 1936 – Papratović) in v sodelovanju z likovnimi umetniki (Vjekoslav Radoi­ čić, Gualtiero Mocenni in Simone Mocenni Beck, Manuela Vladić Maštruko). To 
so Palčić (Thumbling), Mladoženja jež (Hedgehog Groom) in Hrabri pijetao (Brave 
Rooster). Izhajajoč iz ljudske pravljice kot izvirnega besedila (Genette 1997), vde­ lane v medij slikanice, članek interpretira metodo prenosa ustnega književnega 
besedila v avtorjev umetniški medij slikanice, namenjen v prvi vrsti otrokom. 
Medbesedilne transformacijske strategije ter odnos med literarnimi in likovnimi 
plastmi so v članku analizirani z namenom opazovanja modela ohranjanja đako­ vske (slavonske) kulturne dediščine v kontekstu sodobnega (ne)otroškega bralca. 
To izhodišče vključuje analizo jezika (na podlagi odnosa med narečnim idiomom 
in standardnim jezikom), analizo poetike pravljic (skozi odnos med ustnim izro­ čilom in avtorjem) in analizo poetike slikanice (modeli likovnega posnemanja 
ljudskih artefaktov). Izbira postopkov parafraziranja pravljice v slikanico pred­ postavlja interpretacijo medbesedilnih transformacijskih strategij v odnosu do 
semantične in sintaktične substrukture verbalne in likovne pripovedi. Analiza 
omenjenih strategij izhaja iz Proppove in Lüthijeve definicije poetike pravljice z 
namenom opazovati način spajanja avtorjeve pisave z diskurzom ustnega literar­ nega izročila. V tem primeru gre za stilsko preobrazbo, ki ni posegla v odnos med 
pravljičnim ustnim izročilom Đakova in njegovim prenosom v obliko slikanice; 
nasprotno, ustvarila je zanimivo medigro, dopolnjeno z likovno vsebino, ki je 
blizu sodobnemu otroškemu prejemniku. Premik poudarka od junakovih dejanj 
Picture 6. M. Vladić-Maštruko: 
Representation of grandfather and 
grandmother in the Šokačka’s folk 
costumes
Source: Izvor: Ćurić, M., Vladić-Maštruko, M. (2011)
Conclusion 
By transferring an oral fairy tale to the medium of a picture book, certain inter­ textual connections were established, but also an intercultural dialogue with the 
texts of oral fairy tales as source texts, collected in Slavonia, in the vicinity of Đakovo, 
in the thirties of the twentieth century, but also with Slavonian, Đakovo’s cultural 
heritage. Printed about eighty years after the first writing, the Đakovo’s fairy tales in 
the form of a picture book experienced their paraphrase. Through the implemen­ tation of intertextual transformation strategies, realized through linguistic, literary 
and artistic stylistic procedures, the narrative layer of all the three selected picture 
books experienced a change in the poetics of the stories in relation to the original 
texts, and through the artistic addition of heritage artefacts, the picture books were 
additionally contextualized natively. The shift in the language from the local idiom 
to the standard form, adapted to the modern child recipient, along with the pre­ servation and/or linguistic reinterpretation of Slavonic ethnological identity, and at 
the level of local, native lexemes, is a function of adaptation to modern children’s 
expectations. By transferring the text of an oral fairy tale into the guise of a picture 
book, the stories were visualized, but also there was the “childization” (Hameršak 
2011) of the fairy tale as a genre “which in oral communication until then was aimed 
at children and adults, and sometimes only at adults. ” (Hameršak 2011: 64). Namely, 
through the linguistic and stylistic reinterpretation of the old fairy tale, the emphasis 
is placed on the hero of the story, but also on the implicit reader ­ a child, with all 
the characteristics close to the culture of modern childhood, and even a subversive 
child, characterized by a desire for adventure. Narrative closeness to the contempo­ rary culture of childhood is a sign of emphasized emotionality (which is absent in 
the original texts): from children’ s boredom, through fear of vulnerability, joy, mirth. 
In the paraphrased author’s versions of oral fairy tales, the emotionally upgraded 
identity of the fairy­tale hero additionally upgraded the hero’ s identity by confirming 
him as a child. Despite the emphasis on the hero’s adventure, realized by the jour­ ney, the act of return, embodied in the acquired wealth (“Hrabri pijetao” / “Brave 
Rooster”), the kingdom (“Mladoženja jež” / “Hedgehog Groom”) or the knowledge 

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
74 75
Berislav Majhut, 2005: Pustolov, siroče i dječja družba: hrvatski dječji roman do 1945. Zagreb: 
FF press.
Berislav Majhut, Štefka Batinić, 2017: Hrvatska slikovnica do 1945. Zagreb: Croatian School 
Museum and Faculty of Teacher Education of University of Zagreb.
Smiljana Narančić Kovač, 2015: Jedna priča - dva pripovjedača: slikovnica kao pripovijed. 
Zagreb: ArTresor.
Smiljana Narančić Kovač, Diana Zalar, 2015: Intertekstualnost muzejske slikovnice. In: 
Istraživanje paradigmi djetinjstva, odgoja i obrazovanja. Ur. Lidija Cvikić, Blaženka Filipan­ Žignić, Iva Gruić, Berislav Majhut, Lovorka Zergollern­Miletić. Zagreb: Faculty of Teacher 
Education of University of Zagreb. 68–80.
Maria Nikolajeva, 2012: Reading Other people‘s Minds Through Word and Image. Children‘s 
Literature in Education. 43, 3. 273–291.
Dubravka Oraić Tolić, 2019: Citatnost u književnosti, umjetnosti i kulturi. Zagreb: Ljevak. 
Milena Papratović, 2020: Narodne pripovijetke iz okolice Đakova. Đakovo: Ogranak Matice 
hrvatske u Đakovu.
Vladimir Propp,1982: Morfologija bajke. Beograd: Prosveta. 
Lawrence Sipe, 1998: How Picture Books Work: A Semiotically Framed Theory of Text­ 
Picture Relationships. Children‘s Literature in Education. 29, 2. 97–108.
Manda Svirac, 2020: Predgovor. In: Milena Papratović: Narodne pripovijetke iz okolice 
Đakova. Đakovo. 5–7.
Jozo Vrkić, 1997a: Vražja družba, Hrvatske predaje o vilama, vješticama, vrazima i drugim 
nadnaravnim bićima. Zagreb: Glagol.
Jozo Vrkić, 1997b: Hrvatske bajke, 100 najljepših obrađenih, 25 antologijskih izvornih. Zagreb: 
Glagol. 
Diana Zalar, Antonija Balić­Šimrak, Stjepko Rupčić, 2014: Izlet u muzej na mala vrata – 
prema teoriji slikovnice. Zagreb: Faculty of Teacher Education of University of Zagreb.
Zlata Živaković Kerže, 2011: Milena Papratović – prva doktorica etnologije u Hrvatskoj. 
In: Zbornik Muzeja Đakovštine. Ur. Borislav Bijelić. Đakovo: Museum of Đakovo Region. 
103–110.
v njegov čustveni svet je ključni stilistični element, zaradi katerega tudi recepcija 
in transformacija pripovedne plasti slikanice sledi poetiki »otroštva« (Hameršak 
2011), ki je blizu sodobni kulturi otroštva. V slikanicah je očitna jezikovna trans­ formacija slavonskega narečja v standardni jezik, ki pa skozi ljudsko besedišče vse­ eno ohranja nekatere lekseme iz slavonskega ljudskega izročila. Likovni umetniki 
so z uporabo različnih tehnik in izbiro ustreznih motivov – slavonskih ljudskih 
artefaktov – v slikanice vnesli slavonsko kulturno izročilo in na ta način literarno 
pripoved lokalizirali v slavonski ljudski prostor. Ljudski moment se v slikanicah še 
dodatno ohranja s pomočjo medbesedilne strategije posnemanja kulturnega izro­ čila, ki temelji na znamenjih likovnega medbesedila.
Picture books:
Mirko Ćurić, Gualtiero Mocenni, Simone Mocenni Beck, 2014: Mladoženja jež (Hedgehog 
Groom). Đakovo: Đakovo cultural circle.
Mirko Ćurić, Vjekoslav Radoičić, 2006: Palčić (Thumbling). Đakovo: Đakovo cultural circle.
Mirko Ćurić, Manuela Vladić­Maštruko, 2011: Hrabri pijetao (Brave Rooster). Đakovo: 
Đakovo cultural circle.
References 
Antonija Balić­Šimrak, Smiljana Narančić Kovač 2011: Likovni aspekti ilustracije u dječjim 
knjigama i slikovnicama. Dijete, vrtić, obitelj 17. 10–12.
Maja Bošković­Stulli,1963: Narodne pripovijetke . Zagreb: Matica hrvatska,
Maja Bošković­Stulli, 2006: Priče i pričanje. Zagreb: Matica hrvatska. 
Maja Bošković­Stulli, 2012: Bajka. Libri&Liberi. 1(2). 279–292. 
Vinko Brešić, 2004: Slavonska književnost i novi regionalizam. Osijek: Ogranak Matice hrvat­ ske u Osijeku.
Robert Francem, 2020: Blago narodne pripovijesti. In: Milena Papratović: Narodne pripovi-
jetke iz okolice Đakova. Đakovo.111–116.
Gerard Genette, 1997: Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. London: Univer­sity of 
Nebrasca Press.
Marijana Hameršak, 2011: Pričalice: o povijesti djetinjstva i bajke. Zagreb: Algoritam. 
Marijana Hameršak, Dubravka Zima, 2015: Uvod u dječju književnost. Zagreb: Leykam inter­ national.
Dragica Haramija, Janja Batič, 2013: Poetika slikanice. Murska Sobota: Franc­Franc. 
Stjepan Hranjec, 2006 : Pregled hrvatske dječje književnosti. Zagreb: Školska knjiga.
Katarina Ivon, Sanja Vrcić­Mataija 2019: Regionalni poetski modeli i suvremeni kanon 
hrvatske dječje književnosti. Croatica et slavica Iadertina. 15 (1). 210–233.
Mario Kolar, 2013: Izazovi književne (mikro)topografije. Kolo. 3–4.
Ljiljana Kolenić, 1997: Slavonski dijalekt. Croatica. 45–46. 101–116.

  OTROK IN KNJIGA 116, 2023 | RAZPRAVE – ČLANKI
Sanja Vrcić-Mataija, Transfer of Oral Fairy Tales into the Medium of Picture Books  
– (Re) Interpretation of Cultural Heritage in Croatian Native Picture Books
74 75
Berislav Majhut, 2005: Pustolov, siroče i dječja družba: hrvatski dječji roman do 1945. Zagreb: 
FF press.
Berislav Majhut, Štefka Batinić, 2017: Hrvatska slikovnica do 1945. Zagreb: Croatian School 
Museum and Faculty of Teacher Education of University of Zagreb.
Smiljana Narančić Kovač, 2015: Jedna priča - dva pripovjedača: slikovnica kao pripovijed. 
Zagreb: ArTresor.
Smiljana Narančić Kovač, Diana Zalar, 2015: Intertekstualnost muzejske slikovnice. In: 
Istraživanje paradigmi djetinjstva, odgoja i obrazovanja. Ur. Lidija Cvikić, Blaženka Filipan­ Žignić, Iva Gruić, Berislav Majhut, Lovorka Zergollern­Miletić. Zagreb: Faculty of Teacher 
Education of University of Zagreb. 68–80.
Maria Nikolajeva, 2012: Reading Other people‘s Minds Through Word and Image. Children‘s 
Literature in Education. 43, 3. 273–291.
Dubravka Oraić Tolić, 2019: Citatnost u književnosti, umjetnosti i kulturi. Zagreb: Ljevak. 
Milena Papratović, 2020: Narodne pripovijetke iz okolice Đakova. Đakovo: Ogranak Matice 
hrvatske u Đakovu.
Vladimir Propp,1982: Morfologija bajke. Beograd: Prosveta. 
Lawrence Sipe, 1998: How Picture Books Work: A Semiotically Framed Theory of Text­ 
Picture Relationships. Children‘s Literature in Education. 29, 2. 97–108.
Manda Svirac, 2020: Predgovor. In: Milena Papratović: Narodne pripovijetke iz okolice 
Đakova. Đakovo. 5–7.
Jozo Vrkić, 1997a: Vražja družba, Hrvatske predaje o vilama, vješticama, vrazima i drugim 
nadnaravnim bićima. Zagreb: Glagol.
Jozo Vrkić, 1997b: Hrvatske bajke, 100 najljepših obrađenih, 25 antologijskih izvornih. Zagreb: 
Glagol. 
Diana Zalar, Antonija Balić­Šimrak, Stjepko Rupčić, 2014: Izlet u muzej na mala vrata – 
prema teoriji slikovnice. Zagreb: Faculty of Teacher Education of University of Zagreb.
Zlata Živaković Kerže, 2011: Milena Papratović – prva doktorica etnologije u Hrvatskoj. 
In: Zbornik Muzeja Đakovštine. Ur. Borislav Bijelić. Đakovo: Museum of Đakovo Region. 
103–110.
v njegov čustveni svet je ključni stilistični element, zaradi katerega tudi recepcija 
in transformacija pripovedne plasti slikanice sledi poetiki »otroštva« (Hameršak 
2011), ki je blizu sodobni kulturi otroštva. V slikanicah je očitna jezikovna trans­ formacija slavonskega narečja v standardni jezik, ki pa skozi ljudsko besedišče vse­ eno ohranja nekatere lekseme iz slavonskega ljudskega izročila. Likovni umetniki 
so z uporabo različnih tehnik in izbiro ustreznih motivov – slavonskih ljudskih 
artefaktov – v slikanice vnesli slavonsko kulturno izročilo in na ta način literarno 
pripoved lokalizirali v slavonski ljudski prostor. Ljudski moment se v slikanicah še 
dodatno ohranja s pomočjo medbesedilne strategije posnemanja kulturnega izro­ čila, ki temelji na znamenjih likovnega medbesedila.
Picture books:
Mirko Ćurić, Gualtiero Mocenni, Simone Mocenni Beck, 2014: Mladoženja jež (Hedgehog 
Groom). Đakovo: Đakovo cultural circle.
Mirko Ćurić, Vjekoslav Radoičić, 2006: Palčić (Thumbling). Đakovo: Đakovo cultural circle.
Mirko Ćurić, Manuela Vladić­Maštruko, 2011: Hrabri pijetao (Brave Rooster). Đakovo: 
Đakovo cultural circle.
References 
Antonija Balić­Šimrak, Smiljana Narančić Kovač 2011: Likovni aspekti ilustracije u dječjim 
knjigama i slikovnicama. Dijete, vrtić, obitelj 17. 10–12.
Maja Bošković­Stulli,1963: Narodne pripovijetke . Zagreb: Matica hrvatska,
Maja Bošković­Stulli, 2006: Priče i pričanje. Zagreb: Matica hrvatska. 
Maja Bošković­Stulli, 2012: Bajka. Libri&Liberi. 1(2). 279–292. 
Vinko Brešić, 2004: Slavonska književnost i novi regionalizam. Osijek: Ogranak Matice hrvat­ ske u Osijeku.
Robert Francem, 2020: Blago narodne pripovijesti. In: Milena Papratović: Narodne pripovi-
jetke iz okolice Đakova. Đakovo.111–116.
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