Introduction
Many strong reasons for studying children’s literature are shaped by the objectives, values, beliefs, and salable skills of the discipline in which the coursework is seated, but all courses across the wide educational spectrum share elements that invite us to the study of children’s literature. Once we choose to accept the invitation, reward us generously for the cleverness of our choice.
First and foremost, a study of children’s literature brings into focus personal taste and beauty. This is true for any course in literature and no less true for children’s literature.
Entangled with the question of taste is one of cultural privileging. A study of children’s literature introduces students to a body of aesthetically challenging works that frequently go missing from other literature courses and from what is generally characterized as the canon.
History
This dissident aspect of the academic field of children’s literature references its origin. Books and texts for children attracted scholarly attention at a transitional moment in education, during a time of strenuous academic debate about the value of hierarchies, such as the literary canon. The field of children’s literature retains in varying degrees some measure of the revolutionary spirit of those teachers who pointed out the inseparability of universal standards and systems of canonization from ideological and historical bias. Through engagement with literary works of outstanding merit that tend to be marginalized by the traditional academic model or in traditionally based curricula, students are introduced to competing narratives of literary history and to divergent views about the social and personal uses of reading.
The Child
Children’s literature also offers students a distinctive critical position—a doubled or overlapping perspective consisting of one’s own reactions and impressions and a set of reactions and impressions one simultaneously conceives might belong to a child reader. This is true, however one understands “the child” or childhood: whether as a cultural construct, a unique existential mode of being with cognitive and conative abilities specific to itself, or as something else. By bringing the paradigm of “the child” into view, a course in children’s literature provides the student with a range of complex, interrelated discourses. Indeed, it invites one to consider and respond to questions at the heart of human culture: what are our responsibilities to children and to the future? What will equip young people for meaningful lives filled with rewarding experiences, enriching relationships, learning, intellectual and emotional growth and self-understanding? What is the best kind of society to enable a healthy and happy future for all children? These are questions that enhance capacity for informed citizenship and critical thought.
Disciplines
The separate disciplines hold out additional powerful reasons for studying children’s literature. A literary approach to children’s literature enables the student to read accomplished works created within a matrix of constraints and procedures otherwise thought inimical to the composition of belles lettres: texts of great virtuosity, moral complexity and emotional force that expressly avoid sophisticated diction, complex sentences, self-conscious connections to a corpus of modern and traditional literature, and appeal to length of experience in the world or the reader’s mature sense of a finished self. It enables students to contemplate the myths that society deems most pressing or most deserving of passing on to the next generation.
Children’s literature also enables students to read and study texts that rely in part or in whole on pictorial narratives, as well as book design, typography and the blurring of distinctions between textual and paratextual elements, thereby encouraging students to cultivate visual and tactile as well as verbal literacies. Students studying to be teachers learn how books might match up to reading levels and the developmental stages in a child’s life, and how they might impact the lives of children in profound and beneficial ways, while those studying children’s literature within a program in childhood studies examine historical, sociological, psychological and anthropological definitions of childhood, and how they ramify within human culture. Students in a course of library science learn the practices and applications by which younger readers might be introduced to the world’s vast and unruly output of reading for children, and how they might be assisted in navigating their own way through a maze of texts or brought with open minds to the frontier of symbolic thought.
Symbolic Thought
Of course, this last area is also of broader interest. While dreams, movies and television relentlessly envelop children in imaginative realities, reading often represents a child’s first opportunity to reflect in a focused way on the means by which symbols are created, how symbolic thought is culturally effectuated and directed. When we study children's literature, regardless of the discipline in which we are situated, we grasp the many complex avenues through which society reflects on the operations of symbolic thought, and thus perhaps on the origins of being human.
- Michael Joseph
Do you remember the picture books that first brought you joy? The ones that were read to you before you could read, or the ones that sparked your imagination for the first time? When you think about these stories what do you see?
For most of us, we might see our favorite characters or the enchanting setting of our childhood books. We see the illustrations brought to life through our memories.
Picture books bring tremendous benefits to kids who are in the early stages of developing their reading skills. Illustrations shown alongside text offer invaluable tools to help kids build understanding, fluency, vocabulary and other foundational literacy skills. The imagery in a picture book brings the pages to life, serving as a visual roadmap for the story.
Here are five important benefits picture books bring to children who are learning to read.
As kids begin to speak and build sentences, they learn to recognize sounds and patterns within spoken language. This is known as phonological awareness and serves as the foundation for learning to read. The rhythmic cadence of many picture books helps kids develop and practice phonological awareness. Kids may start by repeating passages of their favorite picture books, then go on to make up their own similar rhymes or stories.
Dr. Seuss’ ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book! is a picture book that helps build phonological awareness while practicing letter sounds. “Big A little a, what begins with A? Aunt Annie’s Alligator. A…a…A.”
At a most basic level, picture books help kids understand that words convey meaning—connecting the pictures in the book with the words on the page. Kids will check pictures on the page for background knowledge or contextual clues for vocabulary development. They even use the images to learn the names of new objects.
You can ask a child, “Can you show me where the alligator is on this page?” or “What letter does the word alligator start with?”
By organizing the sequence of events in a story, kids can practice their ability to comprehend what they read. Mastering this skill starts with identifying beginning, middle, and end, and summarizing key events that take place (in order) throughout the story.
Visual aids and illustrations remind the reader what happened throughout the story and support their ability to confidently retell the key events. As kids hone their sequencing skills, let them look at the pictures to remind them what happened in the story. If they guess, and guess incorrectly, then use it as an opportunity to re-read the passage. This offers a chance to do an additional check for understanding.
Furthermore, books filled with pictures encourage kids to make predictions and inferences about what’s going to happen next. They can pair the words with the expressions and setting shown in the pictures to make an informed guess about what comes next in the story.
In Miss Nelson is Missing!, readers can infer that Ms. Viola Swamp is Miss Nelson in a costume. Clues in the book, such as the coincidental timing of Miss Nelson’s disappearance and the appearance of Ms. Swamp help lead to this inference.
As you read a book with a child, you are both likely making inferences throughout. The key to helping kids realize when they are making an inference is to talk through the inferences out loud throughout the book. Take breaks to ask questions: “How does Miss Nelson feel when kids misbehave in class?”, “Why do you think Ms. Viola Swamp was outside of Miss Nelson’s house?”, “What do you think happened to Miss Nelson?”.
There’s a lot to learn on the road to becoming a skilled reader. Along with sequencing and summarizing, there are many other essential skills kids must master in order to comprehend the text they read. Some of those skills include; sentence construction, problem solving, comparing and contrasting, drawing conclusions, inferring, and more.
Books rich with illustrations and photos offer many benefits to help enhance reading comprehension. Here are just a few of those benefits.
Pictures provide visual clues to help us discover more about the narrative.
Pictures show expressions, unwritten details, setting, and context that help us compare and contrast. These details allow us to analyze more complex details of character development.
Illustrations can provide important background knowledge and offer contextual cues based on what’s happening in the story. This helps us “read between the lines” to find meaning that may not be explicitly stated in the text.
When you think about your favorite childhood book, what comes to mind? You may see a sparkling fish with rainbow colors or a tree that gives everything in the name of selfless affection. Maybe you see your favorite characters or other-worldly settings.
The illustrations of a picture book can be enchanting, fun, and inspiring. They can tell a story of their own. Many of us remember picture books as the books that made us first fall in love with reading.
One key ingredient of picture books that we shouldn’t discount is the benefit of pictures in sparking joy and creating a fun and engaging reading experience for kids. Picture books do a better job of holding the attention of kids learning to read than books without pictures. And reading picture books with kids on a regular basis (ideally daily) can help them self-monitor their behavior until they can sit through a whole story and focus on the events.
When kids enjoy particular books or stories, they may ask to read the same book again and again. This is a good sign that this book sparks interest and intrigue for a young reader. Let kids choose the stories they love, read them often, and offer options to explore new books as well.
The subject matter in picture books can introduce social cues and cultural differences that encourage social-emotional development. Books that model social behaviors help hone social language skills and reinforce positive behavior.
In the book The Name Jar, a young Korean girl living in America is teased about her name, Unhei. A passage from the book reads, “She was relieved that the kids on the bus had gone to other rooms, but her face still felt red.” Marked by this bullying, she decides to search for a different name. Throughout the story her classmates and family show gentle kindness, support, and encouragement for Unhei until she is ready to introduce herself and her culture, as Unhei, to the rest of her classmates.
The Name Jar offers a chance for kids to practice empathy for Unhei and observe the outcome of kind, encouraging behavior compared to the negative effects of bullying.
Picture books also explore difficult subjects like fear, grief, taking risks, building friendships, self-control, and so much more. These books offer outlets for kids to explore challenging subjects in a format that’s approachable to them.
The illustrations in a book can help kids relate to the characters and setting portrayed. Picture books featuring protagonists of different identities, races, cultures, and abilities allow kids to relate to the texts where they see their own image reflected back. Furthermore, #ownvoices books written from the perspective of an author who shares a certain identity can provide an experience that’s profoundly relatable to kids’ differing experiences.
For example, Grace for President, allows young girls of color see themselves as future leaders in positions of power.
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