Visual Literacy

By Molly Alexander

As winter approaches, we hope everyone enjoys some cozy days curled up with a good book. Picture books have the power to take us on adventures to imaginary landscapes, transporting us to new places and experiences. Picture books can be especially magical when we take the time to slow down and pay close attention to the illustrations. The art in picture books can inspire even the youngest reader to become an active participant in the creation of a story. 

You’ve probably heard the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” As one of our five senses, vision is relied upon to make sense of our world beginning in infancy. Young children can read pictures long before they can read words. Pictures have been used to tell stories throughout human history, from cave paintings, to ancient pottery and stained glass windows, all the way up to contemporary picture book art. Images tell stories and they should be read as carefully as any text. As children’s book author and illustrator Uri Shulevitz puts it, children’s book artists are “writing with pictures.” 

What happens when we slow down and take the time to look closely at illustrations? Looking closely helps us to see so much more than we may have noticed upon our first impression. When you engage with your child around illustrations, wonderful conversations can take place by asking simple questions such as “What do you notice? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can we find?” 

Line, color, proportion, and shape play a central role in telling a story. Meaning and emotions can be conveyed through color, texture, and perspective. The design elements of picture books (size, orientation, use of space, borders and frames, etc.) also participate in the telling of a story. For example, in Jan Brett’s The Mitten, images along the borders are used to provide additional information and foreshadowing as the story unfolds. A square layout of a book such as A Good Day by Kevin Henkes can conjure feelings of safety and coziness, while a large vertical layout of a book like Madeline by Ludwig Bemelman creates the space for the viewer to experience the height of the Eiffel tower and the “old house in Paris covered in vines” as well as the smallness of Madeline.

Wordless picture books in particular show us how a story can be told through images alone. One of the most delightful aspects of wordless picture books is that they can be “read” by pre-readers and beginning readers, speakers of all languages, and illiterate or semi-literate adults who want to read with children. Simply exploring the illustrations on each page, discussing what you see, what the characters are doing and feeling, the setting, and sequence of events can lead to a rich shared family reading experience.

One of the most pleasurable aspects of focusing on illustrations with your child is getting a little window into their observations and thoughts! Every person brings their own prior visual experiences into how they understand an image. For example, one day shortly after Halloween, after many experiences playing with pumpkins, my toddler looked at the cover of I Like Me! By Nancy Carlson and announced, “She’s sitting on a green pumpkin!” Once you get into the practice of talking about what you see together, you will start to hear more and more of your child’s unique perspective.

Time spent noticing and appreciating the illustrations together in picture books will support your child’s development of visual literacy skills. The National Art Education Association describes visual literacy as the ability to interpret, comprehend, appreciate, use, and create visual media. Visual literacy is critical in helping us understand our world, especially since we are surrounded by visual images— on boxes of food, signs, murals, television, social media, emojis, the internet, etc. How can children learn to interpret images and make meaning out of them? Reading picture books together is a fantastic way to promote visual literacy skills. 

The next time you settle down with a book together, whether it’s a new title or a beloved old favorite, we encourage you to pay more attention to what the illustrations have to offer. We hope you discover something new to savor! Here are some recommendations for excellent wordless picture books:

The Red Book by Barbara Lehman

Draw! By Raúl Colón

The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney

Flotsam by David Wiesner

A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka

If you’re feeling inspired to dig deeper into visual literacy, we encourage you to check out these wonderful resources:

• Toledo Museum of Art Resources
• The Whole Book Approach by Megan Dowd Lambert
• Speechless: The Art of Wordless Picture Books. The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art has this exhibition on view until December 5th, and there’s still time to check it out online at the Carle’s website! 

Nonfiction Books Enrich Summer

by Katrina Morse for Family Reading Partnership

What can you and your children do this summer? Read nonfiction books together and you’ll learn fascinating facts, be inspired by incredible events, and maybe find a favorite activity!

Read about people in history or in present day. Delve into other cultures. Find out more about animals, plants, minerals, oceans, mountains, deserts, and jungles. Learn how to create something or develop a new skill.

Nonfiction books are a special type of picture book for children. The best of them tell a story that is relevant to children while incorporating well-researched facts. Nonfiction children’s books are in their own section of the library apart from fiction, arranged by subject.

Try some of these nonfiction picture books and find more books on topics that your family enjoys:

“Island: A Story of the Galápagos” by Jason Chin. Award winning author and artist Jason Chin tells the fascinating life story of an island from birth to old age. With intricately detailed paintings you’ll learn about the unique plants, insects, and animals that live only on the Galápagos Islands, and nowhere else in the world. Chin uses successions of small images and full spreads in glorious color to show the island growing and changing, affecting what can live there. Chin also wrote and illustrated “The Grand Canyon,” “Redwoods,” “Gravity,” and many other exquisite works of non-fiction for children.

“Me, Frida,” by Amy Novesky, illustrated by David Diaz. The story of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and her determination to create artwork that expressed her feelings. Moving to San Francisco, Frida had to find her way in a new country and develop her own painting style that was unlike her husband’s, the famous muralist Diego Rivera. Children will be inspired by Frida’s belief in herself and courage to follow her dreams.

“A Picture Book of Benjamin Franklin” by David Adler, illustrated by John and Alexandra Wallner. In easy to understand text, Adler tells about American statesman Benjamin Franklin, starting with his life as a child and describing his many interests and contributions as an adult in science, writing, inventing, and government. Adler has written over 175 books for children including many biographies and the Cam Jansen series.

“Ranger Rick’s Guide to Hiking” by Helen Olsson. This is not a story but a very practical guide for children on where to go hiking, what to wear, safety precautions, and creative things to do while outside. It’s a “how to” guide that will give children the information and confidence to set out on a trail with the family. Also in the series are children’s guides for camping and fishing.

Patrick McDonnell’s Books Teach Love and Kindness

by Katrina Morse for Family Reading Partnership

How about starting the New Year off with more love and kindness? Treat your family to some books by award winning author and illustrator Patrick McDonnell. His stories show the many ways we can cultivate kindness toward one another and accept others for who they are, especially if different from us. McDonnell’s picture books are written for young children, but his stories touch on big life messages that will resonate with adults.

McDonnell is widely known for his comic strip “MUTTS” that premiered in 1994 and stars a cat named Mooch and a dog named Earl (coincidently McDonnell’s real dog’s name). One of the author’s passions is in helping facilitate pet ownership and kindness toward animals. 5% of all sales of printouts of his comic strips (www.mutts.com) go to The Humane Society of the United States’ Animal Rescue Team.

McDonnell’s work is strongly influenced by George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat” comic strip (1913-1944, New York Evening Journal). He uses the same bulbous noses, black eyes with no whites of the eyes showing, and loosely rendered black ink lines to define his characters. He does everything without computer technology and hand paints each image with watercolor. In the style of Harriman he also uses tender-hearted colloquial dialog between characters. “Yesh!” says Mooch, quite often.

But an even bigger influence on his artwork was Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comics, and a mentor to McDonnell. Schulz was also profoundly influenced by Harriman, the defining comic strip artist in his time. Learning from Harriman, Schulz added depth of meaning and personal feeling into his “cute” characters and passed the value of incorporating sentiment into comics, on to McDonnell.

In 2005, McDonnell broke into the children’s book world with the book “The Little Gift of Nothing” about the significance of giving your presence and companionship to someone instead of a physical gift. Since then he has written and illustrated 12 children’s books and collaborated with Eckhart Tolle (author of “The Power of Now”) on a book for adults, “Guardians of Our Being, Spiritual Teachings from Our Dogs and Cats.”

Here are some favorite Patrick McDonnell books to read with your young children. Talk about what happens in each story and see if love and kindness grow this year!

• “Hug Time.” Little orange-striped kitten Jules is so filled with love that he wants to hug the whole world. Jules makes a Hug-To-Do List and visits places around the earth, hugging many endangered species and getting many hugs in return.
• “Wag!” “Fwip, fwip, fwip!” wags Earl’s tail. Mooch wants to know what makes Earl’s tail wag. After much observation, Mooch finds out. It’s love!
• “Thank You and Good Night.” How many fun things can you do at a pajama party? These 3 friends have an evening packed with togetherness. They stage a funny-face contest, learn a chicken dance, play hide-and-seek, practice yoga, eat, watch for shooting stars—and they are thankful for it all.
• “Art.” Art is a boy and art is a thing to do. McDonnell uses this homonym pair to play with the idea that unbridled creation in squiggles, wiggles, and zigzags can be a person’s identity. Can you tell Art and art apart?
• “The Little Red Cat Who Ran Away and Learned His ABC’s (the hard way)” Great for a child who already knows his or her alphabet, this wordless book is a continuously flowing story that needs the reader to identify what word is represented in each illustration of the alphabet. Here’s the trailer for the book on Youtube.