This study focuses on feminist children’s literature that attempts to challenge patriarchal hegemony in Latin America and constructs alternative discourses on gender equality through picturebook medium. Thus, the aim of this study is to analyse the manner in which the main female characters are visually and verbally represented within two contemporary Argentinian feminist picturebooks. All in order to determine the manner in which main female characters are represented as gendered subjects, their positionings in terms of power, and whether they perform subversive actions to challenge traditional gender positionings.

The research material consists of two biographical picturebooks, Frida Kahlo for girls and boys (2015) and Violeta Parra for girls and boys (2015), from the “anti-princesses” collection published by Chirimbote and written and illustrated respectively by Nadia Fink and Pitu Saá. A combination of elements from picturebook theory, visual discourse analysis, and feminist post-structuralism constitute the method of analysis. The main findings are that in both picturebooks, Frida Kahlo and Violeta Parra are represented as complex feminine subjects, who have power positionings that could be conflicted by some displayed elements of hegemonic discourses. Nevertheless, the representations of Frida Kahlo and Violeta Parra correspondingly performed some subversive actions for their time being. In essence, both characters are constructed ambiguously, as both challenge and subvert the norm but also sometimes conform to it.