From: Shutta Crum <shutta>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 12:53:16 -0500

Thanks for mentioning: "visual language," Robin. That's exactly what it is .
. . and in its simplicity, it is very powerful.

 

Being a veteran of hundreds, if not thousands, of storytimes over my library career-including babies (the youngest I had attending was 5 weeks old!) . .
. I found that there was great power in the clear strong pics/photos with lots of contrast and very little background detail. This included the board books BLACK ON WHITE and WHITE ON BLACK by Tana Hoban as well as other Hoban books-the interesting shapes are arresting. And books with the actual pics of baby faces can grab most of the very young ones. In addition to many of the fine picture books already mentioned, I KISSED THE BABY by Murphy is another in this very graphic vein-and it's fun to boot!

 

 In an aside: it was an interesting revelation to me, when my husband and I went to see that film noir/partly computer-generated movie: Sin City (very violent, but brilliant technical filmmaking). There is a segment near the middle of the movie in which we switch to black on white or white on black images of single images of bits of equipment. To see those stark images on the big screen (a black coiled rope on a solid white background) was exciting and powerful in a very visceral way.

 

Suddenly I could understand how and why babies flap their arms and get excited at very simple strong graphic images-it is a door flung open, when these images are taken in. The visual vocabulary increases exponentially. How exciting and powerful to suddenly fix that in one's mind for the very first time!

 

Shutta Crum

Retired librarian

Ann Arbor District Library

 

 

Shutta Crum, author

www.shutta.com

 

(Bravest of the Brave, Knopf, 2005)

 

 
Received on Mon 07 Nov 2005 11:53:16 AM CST