Picturebooks are commonly used in early language learning for children around the world. They can also be used as a tool for foreign language learning, especially with (very) young learners. This paper gives an overview of the topic and shows the use of picturebooks in a foreign language classroom in a primary school in Croatia. The study focuses on two classes of thirteen-year-old students who have been learning English as their foreign language since the first grade. Two classes of students were selected, one as an intervention group and one as the comparison group. One class was presented with a story only in its written form, while the other was presented with the same story but in the form of a picturebook, in other words relying both on the visual and written aspect of the story. The study aims to compare vocabulary recall in these two cases and show the possible advantage of using a picturebook as a visual aid to support the story as opposed to using only the written form of the story. The main research question of the study is whether the pictures in the picturebook can make a difference in vocabulary recall. While the visual aspect did not make a significant contribution to vocabulary learning in the present study, the story itself does prove to be a successful learning tool, inviting more research about the topic.