This thesis examines the picturebook Outside In by Deborah Underwood and Cindy Derby (2020) in accordance with the ecocritical concepts of ecocitizenship and the pastoral. These concepts can be tied to the Norwegian core curriculum of LK20 through the obligatory, interdisciplinary topic of ‘Sustainable development’, together with the core value of ‘Respect for nature and environmental awareness’ (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2017). The aim of the thesis is twofold: First, to explore the protagonist’s relationship to nature and how this relates to the theme of becoming an ecocitizen and raising awareness of the need for a sustainable society. Second, the aim is to discuss how nature is portrayed in terms of the pastoral idyll. The picturebook is examined through a multimodal analysis of the verbal and visual meaning making, drawing on social semiotics (Halliday, 1978), visual grammar (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2021) and the framework for multimodal analysis by Painter et al. (2013). The discussion is informed by theoretical perspectives on 1) ecocriticism and the pastoral trope with its underlying aesthetic representation of the idyllic chronotope and redefined notion of the post-pastoral concept (Garrard, 2012; Gifford, 2020), 2) the notion of ecocitizenship (Massey & Bradford, 2011), and 3) the ‘Nature in Culture Matrix’ (Goga et al., 2018), a conceptual tool developed by the research group, ‘Nature in Children’s Literature and Culture: Landscapes and Beings––Fostering Ecocitizens’. The analysis of Outside In shows that it is a complex picturebook that combines a celebratory, pastoral display of nature as well as a problematising stance towards the human-nature relationship. Moreover, the picturebook can serve as an excellent starting point for raising awareness for its readers on sustainability, nature, and the environment. Outside In thus fits readily into teaching on sustainable development and ‘Working with texts in English’, a core element in the teaching of English in Norwegian ...