<p>Pain is a complex, biopsychosocial phenomenon that can be instrumental in forming our corporeal, social and emotional selves. But pain is also invisible and difficult to verbalise in explicit terms, so we rely on figurative language to communicate experiences of pain, or pain narratives. Children’s picturebooks offer an opportunity to articulate pain and its biopsychosocial impacts through the synergy of visual and verbal texts, a powerful way to approximate pain’s nebulosity. But how might readers summon empathy for a character in pain if they have no experience of that pain, or if indeed that pain is not visible? This research presents a comparative analysis of two Australian picturebooks regarding emotion ekphrasis and the representation of pain as a biopsychosocial phenomenon. The research takes up Maria Nikolajeva’s charge (2014) that cognitive theory offers new methods of interpreting picturebooks in relation to the development of emotional intelligence and the exploration of germane social contexts. This article thereby presents a comparative analysis of emotion ekphrasis and pain in Wild and Brooks’s <i>Fox</i> (2006), and Gleeson and Blackwood’s <i>Banjo and Ruby Red</i> (2016). The article raises awareness of this underrepresented area of research and prompts further debate on the challenges of representing pain through visual and verbal literature for children.</p>