Illustrated books. Picture books. You might think they are one and the same. But a wonderful explanatory essay published by Parents' Choice sheds some golden light on how they are different -- and why picture books can be so magical, for children and adults. The article is by Jerry Griswold, Director of San Diego State University's National Center for the Study of Children's Literature.
Griswold talks about the interplay between text and picture -- and how the illustrations in a picture book provide a story unto themselves that interweaves with the text, instead of simply rehashing it. Here's an excerpt.
Take the moment in Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit when Peter has lost his shoes and jacket while escaping from Mr. McGregor. The text reads: "Mr. McGregor hung up the little jacket and the shoes for a scarecrow to frighten the blackbirds." But Potter's picture shows something else: the blackbirds aren't frightened at all; indeed, they are lollygagging around the base of the scarecrow. Neither the words alone, nor the picture alone, is sufficient. Separately, each tells a different story. Together, they mean something more.
Lately I've been thinking about visual literacy, about how our children are growing up surrounded by screens that tells stories in color and sound, not just text. I want to learn more about how children learn to read these screens, how and if they discern some of the visual clues they offer. Griswold's article provides an opening for some fascinating questions about what literacy means and how rich a story can be when it mixes text and picture with mastery.
P.S. Disclaimer: Be warned that I've got a undeniable bias for Parents' Choice; I am now under contract to do some writing and reviewing for the Web site, which in my opinion, is pretty darn sharp. More about that in an upcoming blog post.
12:30:19 PM 
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