Why Picture Books are so Important
August
House: 7.27.2017 by
Steve Floyd
 |
One
of my fondest memories as a father was coming home from work and being greeted
by my two young sons who could barely talk or, for that matter, walk across the
room. After a quick hug, we would head to the nearest couch, and I would read
at least one, if not two or three picture books to them before I did anything
else that evening.
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Let’s
start with the fact that before kids can read, they enjoy looking at pictures
to decode the meaning of words as they listen to a story. Think about the
unique contribution that illustrations make to highlight, clarify and reinforce
a story. As a child listens to a parent, an older sibling, or a teacher read a
story, they can scan the illustrations to understand the action and to gain a
better sense of the plotline.
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Literacy
experts point out that the vocabulary, the sentence structure and therefore the
storyline for text only stories need to be much simpler than stories in picture
books. Well-illustrated books not only make a story more entertaining, the
pictures add meaning and increase comprehension of the text narrative.
Another
unappreciated benefit of well-illustrated picture books is that beautifully
depicted scenes may actually develop a child’s reading vocabulary more
effectively than reading written text alone. When a story is text only, without
any pictures to support or complement the action, every aspect of the story has
to be limited to the child’s reading vocabulary which is at a lower level than
his or her speaking vocabulary.
Ironically,
when picture books use higher level vocabulary words, they also expose kids to
more sophisticated storylines, that also happen to be more interesting stories. READ
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April 2 :: International
Children’s Book Day
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