Picturebooks for teenagers? Erzählen mit Bild und Text in der Sekundartstufe

While picturebooks have been part of foreign language classrooms at primary level for quite some time, the potential of this literary format is now increasingly being discovered for the secondary level. The paper presents results from a reading project with secondary school learners in Year 9 of a German Realschule. In the first part, characteristics of picturebooks for young adults are identified. These are illustrated by sample picturebooks that were read in the project. Subsequently, the potential of picturebooks and their reading experiences. The learners read different texts in free reading phases and could choose from a range of follow-up tasks. Results of a questionnaire survey, a group discussion in class and the analysis of selected learner texts show what features of picturebooks make them interesting for students in secondary school and reveal picturebooks’ potential also for the secondary foreign language classroom.