Picture Books revisited
| There is still some misapprehension that little children need to “graduate” from picture books to “real” books. Forty years ago this may have been the case but since then a thriving quality industry in children’s and adolescent books has burgeoned and with it the quality and sophistication of picture books. |  |
School curriculum reflects our very visual age and the importance of visual literacy in its designated “Viewing” strand within the English learning area. Students need to be taught to observe and read pictures and their nuances, from the very simple and literal that prompt understanding of the text (including plot, setting and characterisation), to the more complex that interact with the text/reader more obscurely through image, symbol, inference or contrast.
Reading and looking at simple picture books assists sustained observation of the real world and thus promotes self-knowledge and awareness of others as well as the ability to observe in other areas such as Science. Picture books, such as Graeme Base’s “Uno’s Garden“, are invaluable as motivational bridges into other learning areas.
| Analysis of complex picture books requires education in cultural and social history, values and symbol. One thinks of Anthony Browne’s books and those of our own Shaun Tan and Matt Ottley (particularly Home and Away). While young children would certainly appreciate the former on a superficial level, only older children would “get” the social critiquing that runs through Browne’s work. |  |
Browne, the current UK Children’s Laureate, has made the encouragement of “looking” a priority for his term as Laureate and has this to say:
The illustrations in picture books are the first paintings most children see, and because of that they are incredibly important. What we see and share at that age stays with us for life. If children are encouraged to think that pictures are for babies and that to become educated is to leave images behind and concentrate purely on words, we risk creating a country of visually illiterate adults.
Research has shown that we spend, on average, 30 seconds looking at paintings in a museum and considerably longer reading the captions. I’m sure we can change this by teaching children (and adults) to read pictures as well as words. As adults, we’ve seen so much before that we often turn the pages of a picture book without really looking. Young children tend to look more carefully. It’s often said that children now grow up in a visual world of computer games, television, DVDs and films. That’s true, but these are moving images, and what I believe we all need to do is to stop and really look at pictures and at the world. By looking we learn so much. (Courtesy of The Guardian.)
| As for Shaun Tan’s books: How many children younger than 9 years can even begin to “read” the richness of meaning in his pictures? Indeed, Shaun himself has addressed this issue of audience for picture books in his 2006 PETA article, “Picture books: who are they for?“ |  |
In addition to the literacy opportunity offered by picture books, what better introduction to the visual arts (colour, style, line, shape, technique) for Art’s sake? Again to quote Anthony Browne:
I do feel, however, that in our rush for children to pass tests and tick boxes we are in danger of crushing their gloriously innate creativity and imagination.
Many of us, I’m sure, could wax eloquent on the value and relevance of picture books. I, for one, am decades into adulthood and still joyously reading picture books, benefiting from them and advocating their use at all levels of education.
See also our Fiction Focus feature article, Why Picture Books?
