CMIS Evaluation Primary Focus

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?

Used with permission HarperCollins (ABC Books)

Recently published is a must-have resource for all school libraries and parents’ bookshelves.  Entitled 1001 Children’s Books you must read before you grow up, it includes one page reviews (many by well-known authors) of the best of children’s and adolescents’ books from different countries and from different periods of history.  These are grouped into broad age bands: 0-3, 3+, 5+, 8+ and 12+, and most are illustrated with the original cover art.

The preface, written by Quentin Blake, and the introduction, written by the general editor, Julia Eccleshare, are well worth reading.  Blake takes us inside the illustrator’s head and gives a valuable insight into how he dialogues with the text, with the prospective reader in mind, to produce his pictures. He also spotlights the professional concerns which authors face in writing children’s books. Eccleshare writes about the selection as being “a lesson in history and cultural change as much as it is a journey of literary discovery.  Snapshots of attitudes to children, expectations of them, and messages thought suitable for them are all held within the pages of these stories.” (p.11)

With the release in the US and Canada last week of the movie Where the Wild Things Are (although made in Australia, we won’t see it until 3 December), the mainstream media seems to have rediscovered children’s literature. Or more specifically, children’s picture books.  And they don’t always like what they see.

In the New Yorker today, critic Daniel Zalewski has penned a lengthy essay entitled ‘The Defiant Ones’ in which he cites changes in the tone and messages of  picture books over the past 40 or so years. Parents no longer rule, it seems:

Many recent picture books offer inventive variations on the theme of parental subjection. Consider a recent entry in the “Knuffle Bunny” series (Hyperion), by Mo Willems, which revolves around the obsessive relationship between Trixie, a Brooklyn girl, and her plush bunny. Trixie, beginning school in Park Slope, discovers that another girl owns the same toy. They accidentally switch bunnies. That night, Trixie wakes up and realizes that her comfort object is an alien impostor. She flips out—she wants Knuffle Bunny, now! Her dad sheepishly requests a reprieve: “Trixie’s daddy tried to explain what ‘2:30 A.M.’ means. He asked, ‘Can we deal with this in the morning?’ ” Trixie’s fixed stare makes clear that the answer is no. Salvation comes in the form of a ringing phone: the other girl’s father, equally cowed, has called to propose a handoff in Prospect Park. There’s an element of satire here, but the idea that children have executive authority is now so entrenched that many readers, old and young, are likely to consider a moonlit stuffed-animal exchange an ordinary turn of events.

The parents in picture books used to be tougher. In “Bedtime for Frances” (1960), a little badger—as clever as Olivia, but less snotty—devises various schemes for staying up late. (“I forgot to brush my teeth”; “There is a tiger in my room.”) The author, Russell Hoban, lets young readers root for Frances but makes clear that it’s not a game that the badger can win. Frances’s father—after reminding her that he needs sleep so that he can be ready for his job the next morning—calmly issues the threat of a spanking. Implied violence is probably not the ideal means of maintaining control. Yet, a few pages later, Frances is fast asleep.

The whole essay is worth a read, and maybe a comment. Is Zalewski right?

Have you caught up with Colin Thompson’s latest baby, Fearless? This time he has outsourced the illustrations to Sarah Davis, and they make a fine pair.

The publisher’s website has a short trailer, and here are some teaching notes.

Definitely one for dog animal lovers.

Catching up on my professional reading, I came across a gem I think is worth sharing.  In the May 2009 (No.176) edition of Books for Keeps, Joanna Carey interviews 80-year-old Eric Carle.  On being asked how his years as a poster designer and then a graphic designer influenced his work with children’s books, he responds:

Enormously!  The rules that govern graphic design can easily apply to children’s books.  Each page in a child’s book is, in effect, a mini poster.  Advertising teaches you to convey complex ideas economically, but with maximum impact and children need pictures that they can read and understand immediately.  It’s all to do with composition.  It’s just a matter of moving things around until they are in the right place. (p.5)

These words, along with Carle’s May 19 blog post Some thoughts on LOOKING and SEEING, (not to be confused with a current TV advertisement!) may well stimulate students to produce some interesting art pieces or picture books.  Eric Carle and the United Kingdom’s new Children’s Laureate, Anthony Browne, are on the same page when it comes to the importance of “looking”.  Browne has made the encouragement of this a priority for his term as laureate:  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. He has some interesting things to say about Creativity in Schools.