MODULE 3

Introduction to Picture Books

Picture Books
In an era when picture books abound and provide many children with a delightful introduction to the
world of books, it is difficult to imagine a time when books had no illustrations. Nonetheless, the picture
book as we know it is a product of the twentieth century. The development of different types of picture
books over the last half century can be seen as a response to our developing awareness of the importance
of early learning.

Definition and Description

Picture books are profusely illustrated books in which the illustrations are, to varying degrees, essential
to the enjoyment and understanding of the story. For this reason, illustrations in picture books are said to
be integral to the story. The illustrations in picture books provide actual plot or concept information as
well as clues to character traits, settings, and moods. Without the illustrations, therefore, these books
would be diminished, and in some cases the story would make no sense or would be nonexistent.

Many children's books have illustrations but are not picture book. For example, novels and anthologies
often have a few scattered illustrations that depict what has already been described in the text or that
serve to decorate the text. These illustrations are said to be integral to the story when well done,
illustrations of this kind are appreciated and enjoyed by readers, but they are not necessary for a complete
understanding of the story

Evaluation and Selection of Picture Books

Children's first experiences with books must be enjoyable or they will soon not want to be involved with
books. Negative experiences could mean that they may never learn to read or to enjoy reading.

Over a period of time, evaluation and selection of picture books become a matter of achieving a good
balance between what children naturally enjoy and what you want to lead them to enjoy.

The following criteria will help you to identify the best of the picture books:

 The ideas in picture books should be original or presented in an original way. Picture books on
topics that children enjoy and find interesting are preferable to books about childhood, in the
sense of nostalgia for or reminiscence of childhood. Books of the latter sort are for adults, not
children.
 Picture books should avoid racial, ethnic, or sexual stereotyping in text and illustrations. Forms
of stereotyping include implying that all members of a group possess the same characteristics and
failing to portray members of a certain group as participating in selected roles.
 Language and writing style should be rich and varied but not so complicated as to be
incomprehensible to the child. It is desirable to feature new or unusual vocabulary within the
context of interesting situations and complementary illustrations. Avoid overly sentimental and
trite language, as well as writing characterized by short, choppy sentences and lifeless vocabulary.
 Illustrations should be appropriate in complexity to the age of the intended audience. In picture
books for infants, look for relatively uncomplicated pages showing outlined figures against a plain
background. Elements of perspective or unusual page design in which only parts of a figure are
shown may not be readily understood or appreciated by very young children.
  Children prefer color in illustrations, but color is not essential if illustrations are to work well in
picture books. The more important point to consider is whether color or black and white is right
for the story.
 Text and illustrations must be well integrated. This means more than that the illustrations on a
certain page "go along with" the accompanying text. It means that the illustrations complement
or add to the text either by presenting added information about plot, characters, or setting or by
projecting the mood of the story through color and line. Good integration of text and illustrations
demands a balance; one must not overwhelm the other.
 When a book is to be shared with a large group, the illustrations must be large enough to be seen
from a distance.
 Books selected for infants and toddlers must be durable and safe. Durability is determined by type
of cover, type of binding, and paper quality. Safety is ensured by rounded corners, nontoxic
materials, washable pages, and no loose attachments.
 The amount of text on the pages of a picture book determines how long it will take to read the
book aloud or for a child to read the book to herself or himself. Generally, the longer the text the
older the intended audience. Note that children's willingness to listen to stories grows with
experience, which may result in a younger child who has been read to regularly having a much
longer attention span than an older child with no story experience.

Adults sometimes have difficulty perceiving the contributions that illustrations make to picture books. The
following general guidelines may improve your ability to “read” illustrations.

 Note characters and actions that are not mentioned in the text. Illustrations can contribute to
plot.
 Note how characters' physical characteristics are conveyed through the illustrations. Illustrations
can contribute to characterization.
 Note how details such as clothing, architecture, and modes of transportation establish and depict
place and era of the story. Illustrations can contribute to setting.
 Note whether and how the story's message is conveyed by or underscored in the illustrations.
Illustrations can contribute to theme.

Historical Overview of Picture Books

Orbis Pictus (The World in Pictures), an ABC book written and illustrated by John Amos Comenius in
Moravia and published in 1657, is considered the first picture book. Comenius's emphasis on using
pictures to explain and expand the meaning of the text in books for young people was an important first.
But since early books were rare and prohibitively expensive, they were seen by very few children.
Moreover, until well into the nineteenth century, Europeans and Americans believed that books were for
the serious business of educating and soul saving, not for enjoyment! Today's full-color, extravagantly
illustrated, highly amusing picture book is the product of the following important developments.

 Technological advances in color printing. Improved four-color printing presses and printing
techniques made high-quality illustrations in books more affordable. These advances were a
direct result of the Industrial Revolution.
 A more understanding attitude toward childhood. As late as the eighteenth century, the Western
world thought of children as miniature adults and expected them to behave and work accordingly.
 During the nineteenth century, society began to accept the notion of childhood as a time for
playing and learning. At the same time, the general economy began to be able to afford the
average child the leisure time these activities require.
 Higher standards of excellence in picture book illustrations. The first great children's book
illustrators lived in the 1800s. The beauty, charm, and humor of the illustrations of Randolph
Caldecott, Kate Greenaway, and Walter Crane brought children's book art to the attention of the
general public. The establishment of national awards for excellence in children's book illustration
in the twentieth century had the same effect and encouraged more artists to enter the children's
book field.
 A greater demand for books. Growth of public school systems and public and school library
systems accounted for much of this increase in the number of books for children. In addition,
reading came to be recognized as one of the child's best tools for learning and for gaining a worthy
source of entertainment.

As a result of these developments, an economic, social, and political infrastructure that would support
the widespread publishing of children's books was in place in most of the Western world by the early
twentieth century. With its superb children's book illustrators and color printers of the time, England led
the world in publishing picture books from the 1860s until the 1930s.

Today, the picture book genre is well established. Current trends in the field are toward an everwidening
audience, more multicultural themes, and realistic themes, as is demonstrated by the controversial
picture book, Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite (1990), about a two-father family. Other current
trends include greater diversity in formats and more illustrated retellings of folktales. An interesting trend
of the 1990s is to publish picture books with high levels of conceptual difficulty and artistic sophistication,
intended for middle grade and junior high school students. Another trend is toward greater and more
effective use of illustration in informational books. Microchip technology has made it possible to produce
books that emit sounds or talk when certain pages are opened. More and more books are available on
CD-ROM and are reader-interactive.

Types of Picture Books

The first picture books were meant to be read aloud to children. The latter half of this century, in response
to new educational theories and new markets, has seen the development of new types of picture books
to be read and enjoyed independently by a wider range of children than just kindergartners and first-
graders. Thus, today's picture books differ in intended audience, purpose, format, and relative amount
of text and illustration. These differences are not absolute, however; quite often one will find a picture
book having characteristics of several specific types. With the understanding that overlap between types
is inevitable, you will want to learn to recognize the following kinds of picture books (organized by the
intended age of the primary audience from youngest to oldest).

Baby Books
Baby books are simply designed, brightly illustrated, durable picture books that are intended for use with
children aged 0 to 2. An example is Dressing by Helen Oxenbury. Baby books gained popularity in the
1980s in response to the growing evidence of the remarkable learning capacity of very young children.
The types of baby books actually denote the material used in their construction. Board books are
constructed of heavy, laminated cardboard and are either bound as a book with pages or made to fold
out in an accordion fashion. Vinyl books and cloth books are also types of baby books. These books have
little or no text. Their content, which deals with the objects and routines that are familiar to the infant
and toddler, is presented mainly by the illustrations. The best baby books are intelligently designed to
emphasize patterns and associations to promote dialogue between the caregiver and the young child,
who will often look at these books together.

Interactive Books
Interactive books are picture books that stimulate a child's verbal or physical participation as the book is
read. These books ask the child direct questions, invite unison recitation of chants or repeated lines,
encourage clapping or moving to the rhythm of the words, or require the child to touch or manipulate the
book or find objects in the illustrations. The intended audience is usually children aged 2 to 6, and the
books are seen as an extension of their world of play.

Toy Books
Sometimes called engineered or mechanical books. Toy books use paper that has been engineered (i.e.,
cut, folded, constructed) to provide pop-up, see-through, movable, changeable, or three-dimensional
illustrations. Toy books can be found for all ages, but only those that have the simpler types of engineering,
such as split pages or drilled holes for see-through effects, would be appropriate for most young children.
Toy books with fragile or elaborate pop-up features would not last in the hands of a very young child.

Alphabet Books
The alphabet, or ABC, book presents the alphabet letter by letter to acquaint young children with the
shapes, names, and, in some cases, the sounds of the twenty-six letters. Almost all ABC book authors and
illustrators choose a theme (animals, elves, fruit, etc.) or device-(finding the many objects in the
accompanying illustration beginning with the featured letter) to give their books cohesion. Literally
hundreds of ABC picture books have been published during the last twenty years, and naturally some are
better than others. In choosing an ABC book, consider the appropriateness of the theme or device for
students, whether both uppercase and lowercase letters are displayed, and the style of print used (Old
Gothic print, for example, would be unnecessarily complicated).

Most ABC books are intended for the nonreader or beginning reader. Some authors and illustrators use
the alphabet itself as a device for presenting information.

Counting Books

The counting book presents numbers, usually 1 through 10 to acquaint young children with the numerals
and their shapes (1, 2, 3, ...), the number names one, two, three,…), the" concept of how many each
numeral represents, and the counting sequence.

As with alphabet books, authors and illustrators of counting books employ themes or devices to make
them more cohesive and interesting. Specific considerations in evaluating a counting book include the
appeal to children of the theme and objects chosen to illustrate the number concepts, and the clarity with
which the illustrator presents the concept of number.

Illustrators often fill their alphabet and counting books with unusual and intriguing objects for children to
name and count, such as aardvarks, barracudas, and chameleons. Children pick up a great deal of
interesting information and vocabulary in this way. You will be in the best position to decide whether the
novelty of these objects will be motivating or confusing to your students.
Concept Books
A concept book is a picture hook that explores or explains an idea or concept (e.g. opposites), an object
(e.g. a train), or an activity (e.g., working) rather than telling a story. Many concept books have no plot
but use repeated elements in the illustrations and text to tie the book together. Limited text and clearly
understood illustrations in the best concept books stimulate children's exploratory talk about the
concepts, objects, and activities presented.

Alphabet and counting books are considered types of concept books. Another variety of the concept book
that is popular with 2- to 4-year-olds is the naming book, which presents simple, labeled pictures of
people, animals, and objects for young children to identify.

Wordless Books
The wordless book depends entirely on carefully sequenced illustrations to present the story. There is no
text, or the text is limited to one or two pages in the book. Wordless books are generally intended for pre-
readers, usually children aged 4 to 6. When children "read" these illustrations in their own words, they
benefit from the book's visual story structure in several ways:

- They develop a concept of story as a cohesive narrative with a beginning and an end.
- They use language inventively, which promotes language development.
- They learn the front-to-back, left-to-right page progression in reading.
- They begin to understand that stories can be found not only in books but in themselves.

Publishers began to produce wordless picture books in noticeable quantities in the 1960s. Mercer Mayer,
with his wordless book series about a boy, a dog, and a frog, helped to popularize this type of pic- ture
book.

Picture Storybooks
The picture storybook is a picture book in which illustrations and text are equally responsible for telling
the story. Text and illustration occur with equal frequency in these books, and on most double spreads.
The picture storybook is the most common type of picture book.
The text of most picture storybooks is meant to be read aloud to the intended audience of 4- to 7- year-
olds, at least for the first time or two, and often includes challenging vocabulary. Many of the best picture
storybooks are also read and enjoyed independently by children 8 years old and up.

Easy-to-Read and Pattern Books

Easy-to-read books are created to help the beginning reader read more successfully. They use larger print,
more space between lines, limited vocabulary, and such devices as word patterns, repeated text, rhyming
text, and illustration clues. Easy-to-Read books that strongly emphasize word patterns are sometimes
called pattern books. Easy-to-read books can be used with children whenever they want to learn to read,
but the audience for this type of book is usually the 5- to 7-year-old.

The easy-to-read book differs in appearance from the picture storybook in several obvious ways. Because
they are intended for independent reading, they do not have to be seen from a distance and may be
smaller; the text takes up a greater proportion of each page; and the text is often divided into short
chapters. Especially in these "chapter" books, the illustrations are proportionately smaller and less
profuse than in picture storybooks, occurring on approximately every other page.
Picture Books for Older Readers
Anyone, regardless of age, can enjoy beautiful and interesting illustrations, but, more often than not,
picture books are not found in classrooms above grade three. This curious lack of picture books in the
intermediate, middle, and junior high school grades may be due, in part, to resistance among adults who
influence children in their book choices to include picture books after the primary grades. A wiser
approach would be to promote both textual and visual literacy by making appropriate picture books an
option in any reading situation. Picture books for older readers are generally more sophisticated, abstract,
or complex in themes, stories, and illustrations and are suitable for children aged 10 and older. The most
common types of picture books for older readers are picture storybooks, wordless books, toy books, and
informational picture books.

Transitional Books
Transitional books are a special type of book for the child who can read but has not yet become a fluent
reader. These books, which are less profusely illustrated and have lengthier text than the other types of
books, are not considered picture books by some teachers and librarian; in truth, they lie somewhere
between picture books and full – length novels.

Characteristics of transitional books are an uncomplicated writing style and vocabulary, an illustration on
about every third page, division of text into chapters, and slightly enlarged print. Children who read these
books are typically between the ages of 8 and 11. Often, books for the transitional reader occur in series.

With easy-to-read and transitional books in mind, it is 1vise to remember that children by the age of 5 or
6 have become accustomed to hearing wonderful, richly descriptive stories read and told to them. They
are fluent and often sophisticated users of oral language. For children to find themselves suddenly limited
to simplistic, boring stories while learning to read would be disheartening, to say the least. To write well
for the beginning reader is a real challenge, since these stories must treat interesting topics in vivid
language while remaining relatively easy to read. Finding the best of these books for the beginning and
transitional readers in your charge will be time well spent.

Within this century the picture book was begun and developed as a genre, diversified to meet the
demands of an ever-expanding audience and market, and improved as a result of new and refined printing
technology. As researchers came to realize the connections between positive early experiences with good
literature, early learning, and future school success, new types of picture books were developed to serve
both younger and older audiences. Today, high-quality picture books on nearly every imaginable topic can
enrich the lives and imaginations of young children and the classrooms and libraries where they learn.

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