In many countries from Europe, North and Latin America there are different terms commonly used by specialists to refer to a certain subcategory of children s literature - picturebook, album illustré, álbum ilustrado, livro-álbum, and bilderbuch - characterized by the role that visual language plays in reading of the work. Despite the want of a specific name for this subcategory in Brazil, there are many examples of Brazilian picturebooks. This research focuses on the picturebook, and analyzes it from three different perspectives: firstly, definitions presented by different Brazilian and foreign authors, with focus on the specificities of the dialog between verbal and visual languages, and the deliberate use of the book technology as an aesthetic object; secondly, analyzing childhood under a philosophical and sociological approach in search of the possible implications to reading that the categorization of the picturebook as children s book may produce; thirdly, the particularities of creating an object which often has four authors - the writer, the illustrator, the designer, and the editor.