The levels of pleasure of reading amongst children in countries such as Sweden, Denmark and Norway have been subject to concern. Initiatives to improve these levels and projects to understand the conditions for how best to do this have been carried out (Støle, Hanse Wagner & Schwippert, 2020; Hansen et al., 2017). This is done because these societies recognize the negative impact this situation could have for child literacy in the future. One such initiative that has been proposed in Denmark to counter a decline in levels of pleasure of reading amongst children is based on Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). With its origins in art studies, VTS fits well with the multimodal nature of picturebooks and the current metacognitive approach to multimodal reading (Sundmark, 2018). The recent Covid-19 pandemic and the dawn of emergency remote teaching unlocked new opportunities and has provided the seeds for new ways to facilitate reading for both teachers and their students. Through its anchoring in visual literacy, VTS has great potential in an online learning environment. This presentation argues for how VTS can scaffold and support children’s literacy through picturebooks and foster their enthusiasm for literature in the online environment.