Debates & Trends

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Global Perspectives on Social Change in the World

by Kathy Short, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Every two years, the International Board of Books for Young People holds a World Congress in different locations around the globe. The congresses are excellent occasions to make contacts, exchange ideas, and open horizons to global perspectives. In September, 600 people from around the world gathered in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, for panel discussions, lectures, seminars, and workshops around the theme of the strength of minorities. I have found that many so-called “world” conferences are actually primarily composed of Americans who use the conference as an excuse to travel abroad. This was not the case in Santiago—the attendees came from over 63 countries with only 40 of the 600 from the United States. The sessions focused on a wide range of issues related to minority languages and issues of inequity related to children’s books within various cultures and countries. Continue reading →

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Connecting Text and Illustrations

by Prisca Martens, Towson University, Towson, MD

During September we have explored how learning to read mulitmodally by integrating the pictorial text with the written text in picturebooks relates to young children’s reading development. We’ve examined children’s responses to picturebooks when they learn to read multimodally and also discussed classroom experiences that support that learning/reading.
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Learning to Read the Written and the Pictorial

by Prisca Martens, Towson University, Towson, MD

This week I’ll provide an example of the kinds of curricular experiences my co-researchers and I designed for the first graders to help them learn to read the pictorial text in picturebooks. As I shared last week, at the end of the school year most of the children were making sophisticated observations and reading meanings in the illustrations, in addition to the written text, which enhanced their understandings.
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Reading Multimodally

by Prisca Martens, Towson University, Towson, MD

In last week’s blog we reflected on the various modes or semiotic systems through which our culture communicates meaning. These include visual (i.e., art, moving images), linguistic (i.e., language), auditory (i.e., sound, music), gestural (i.e., movement, dance), and spatial (i.e., layout, design). Picturebooks are multimodal, drawing on the linguistic, visual, spatial, and gestural systems. Schools and society, though, tend to emphasize the written text for constructing meaning at the expense of the others.

My colleagues and I are in the second year of a three year study exploring how, in picturebooks, learning to read meanings through a variety of modes relates to beginning readers’ reading development. We worked with 37 first graders in two classrooms last year. At the beginning and end of the year we asked the children to read a picturebook and retell it and then respond to questions about the illustrations without the book in front of them.
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Words Aren’t Everything

by Prisca Martens, Towson University, Towson, MD

In our ever changing world it is not surprising that the concepts of literacy and what it means to be literate continue to evolve. The traditional definition that associates reading and writing with print on paper no longer encompasses the range of texts literate persons encounter on a daily basis. These texts can be printed on paper or transmitted electronically, sometimes even in real time. They come in a range of representational forms. Today’s communication systems can be multimodal, linear or nonlinear, and even depart from the traditional left to right or top to bottom orientation.

Semiotic systems are systems of signs through which societies or cultures share meaning. These sign systems may be language based, visual (i.e., art, moving images), auditory (i.e., sound, music), gestural (i.e., movement, dance), or spatial (i.e., layout, design). Each sign system conveys understanding in unique ways and offers its own exclusive perspective on a particular cultural meaning. Texts are one way of communicating meaning in a social context. Multimodal texts employ more than one semiotic system, with each system contributing in a different way to how the text is comprehended.
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Visual Symbolism as Meaning-Making

Cheri Anderson, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

Book Cover for My Little Round HouseThe final book we will share is My Little Round House written and illustrated by Bolormaa Baasansuren with an English adaption by Helen Mixter, published by Groundwood Books, 2009. Boloramaa Baasansuren graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Mongolia and also studied children’s book illustration in Italy and Russia. She has won numerous awards including Distinguished Best Book of Mongolia and prizes at the International Competition of Illustration (Teario/UNICEF) for her illustrations in Tales on Horseback, the Grand Prize at the international book competition of the National Cultural Festival in Fukuoka, Japan for The Legend of Wives’ Hair, and The Grand Prize at the Noma Concours for the Japanese edition of My Little Round House. She lives in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Boloramaa Baasansuren’s extensive firsthand knowledge of Mongolian culture radiates throughout her extraordinary illustrations.
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Conveying Meaning through Visual Elements

Cheri Anderson, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

Book Cover from The Imaginary GardenThis week we want to share the picture book, The Imaginary Garden, written by Andrew Larsen, illustrated by Irene Luxbacher, and published by Kids Can Press, 2009. The author and illustrator are both from Toronto where the illustrator lives in an art-filled apartment, an important context for this Canadian picture book. Reviews of this book need to discuss the use of color and texture as connected to the themes of imagination and relationships.
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Cultural Issues in Reviewing Illustration

Cheri Anderson, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

Book Cover from Alego

Our focus this week is a picture book from Canada, Alego, written and illustrated by Ningeokuluk Teevee and published by Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, 2009. Ningeokukluk Teevee is an interesting young artist from Kinngait (Cape Dorset), home to the great tradition of Inuit art. The book provides an authentic introduction to the life and world of an Inuit child. Our analysis of the illustrations in this book raises issues about illustration styles that are specific to a particular cultural group and how those styles might be read by viewers outside that cultural tradition.
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Evaluating Illustrations in Reviews of International Picture Books

Cheri Anderson, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

This July blog highlights the need to include more in depth discussion of the illustrations within picture books in published book reviews. The blog entries will each discuss an award-winning international picture book as an example of the kinds of discussion that should be occurring more frequently in reviews.

Illustrations create a depth of meaning within picture books that are essential to the reading experience for that book. Unfortunately most picture book reviews give only basic information about the illustrations, usually just the medium or technique. Although the medium used by illustrators and the techniques for how they create the art is important, many other visual aspects elements are equally as interesting. The complexity of illustrators’ decisions as they go about their creative processes is fascinating. Some of these decisions are also made by the art directors at the publishing companies. Visual decisions such as the book format, size of the book, font selection, and scale add to meaning making for the reader. Through skillful use of visual elements, such as color, line, space, and perspective, the illustrator engages the emotions of the reader and directs the reader’s attention. Just as important as the written text in establishing authenticity in picture books is a close examination of the illustration style and whether it indicates a particular location of where the story takes place and whether the style and the details in the images are authentic to the culture depicted in the book. Further, the illustrations need to be examined for possible stereotypes or inaccuracies.
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Families Matter: Combining Literacy Reflections – Part IV

By Charlene Klassen Endrizzi, Westminster College, PA

    “Books are sometimes windows, offering views of the world that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange… A window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.” (Rudine Sims Bishop, 1990).

Sharing family stories with children and their families offered eight classroom teachers a window into students’ most powerful literacy environment – their homes. Weekly written conversations in Family Message Journals helped teachers consider the potential for combining home and school literacy communities. In this fourth and final post, I return to our dual goals of valuing families’ life experiences (windows) while also looking outward to the larger world of diverse families (mirrors).
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