I just love picture books…..

Literature and the Child

Eighth Edition

By: Lee Galda, Lawrence Sipe, Lauren Liang, Bernice Cullinan

Picture books are great for non readers and students who have a difficult time reading.  I use many picture books for my struggling readers. I tell them that good readers use look at pictures to help them read the words.  They love using the pictures as clues.  Below is plenty of information on how to incorporate picture books in your classroom.

Picture books are the first exposure to fine art for many children.  They enrich reader’s worlds by providing opportunities for experiences through pictures and print.  Things to consider in choosing picturebooks are the quality of the book, quality of the text, qualify of the art, and quality of the overall design of the book.   These include elements of visual art.  These include materials used in making the art such as watercolors, oils, acrylics, ink, pencil, charcoal, pastels tissue paper, construction paper, fabric, etc.  Illustrators use line.  Line is a mark on paper or place where colors meeting.  Lines focus the viewer and keep their eye in a particular direction.    Artists use color to convey warmth and coolness and also personality trait.   Texture conveys a sense of reality.  Interesting patterns or contrasts suggest movement and action, roughness or delicacy.  Design expresses the artist’s unique visions.  Artists make choices about the media and techniques they use to create their art.  Many artists develop a characteristic way of presenting ideas visually.  Picturebooks educate our student’s imagination.  

Wordless storybooks tell a story through illustrations alone.  Its title often contains clues as to what the story is about.  Picture storybooks and graphic novels for older readers entice visually sophisticated student.  They also help struggling readers lean more easily using boos with more pictures and less text.  Picturebooks of poetry and song present an artist’s visual interpretation of a story.  The artist arranges the text across the pages, often with only one or two lines per page and then illuminates each thought expressed by the text.  Nonfiction picturebooks contain text that is accurate, organized in a manner appropriate to both the information presented and the intended audience, designed in an attractive and appropriate fashion, and written and illustrated with verse and style.

Topics presented in nonfiction picture books are may, the language is clear, and the illustrations work with the text to convey information that young readers want and need to know.  Many nonfiction picturebooks offer a way to read about and see the lives of others.  Many nonfiction picturebooks are biographies.  These are stories of real people.  Alphabet books serve many useful purposes.  Children ages two to four point to pictures and label objects on the page.  Five year olds may say the letter names and words that start with each letter.  Six year olds may read the letters, words or text to confirm their knowledge of let-sounds.  Alphabet books help children develop an awareness of words on the page.  They increase language learning and serve as a pleasurable activity for children.

Board books are a format that appeals to adults as well as infants, toddlers, and children in preschool.  The books are often six to twelve pages log and made of cardboard.  There are also cloth booths, shape books, pudgy books, lift-the-flap books, toy books and plastic bathtub books.  Books of this style are appropriate for children in the picture identification stage.   Predictable or patterned books are structured using strong language patterns, such as repeated phrases, rhyme and rhythm; cumulative story structures that add, or accumulate, information; and familiar concepts, illustrations reinforce the language patterns and provide a visual reproduction of the text.  These attributes help children anticipate hat s going to happen next and predict the next word to come.  Beginning to read books are those that children who have just become independent readers can enjoy on their own.  They combine controlled vocabulary with creative storytelling and engaging illustrations.  Their sentences are simple with few embedded clauses, and the language is often direct dialogue.  Sentence breaks occur according to natural phrases. 

Students who encounter excellent picturebooks learn how to read not only the worlds but also the pictures.  They pay close attention to what they see, often noticing things in the illustrations that most adults would miss.  Students notice the artist’s craft and discuss it. 

Cullinan, B. (1989). Literature and the child (2nd ed.). San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.