From: Michele Regenold <michele.regenold_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2010 12:04:19 -0600

This has been a fascinating discussion about picture books, including issue s about getting books into kids' hands and educating parents about what to do with books and kids. (hi, Carol!)

During the recent discussion of children's non-fiction, I mentioned that I' d assigned my community college students in northern Wisconsin to select a non-fiction children's picture book to analyze for their next paper. Most o f them did a fine job of analyzing the effectiveness of some of the author's and/or illustrator's choices and came up with some really interesting insights about the effectiveness of things like pairing photos with illustrations.

But one thing I learned as a result of this assignment is that many of my students, who range in age from 18 to 55, had previously thought of picture books as simple or dumbed down, partly because the audience was "just" kids . Their appreciation for the complexity of picture books and the many choices authors and illustrators make in creating them grew by leaps and bounds.

So what I'm wondering is whether parents who are not currently encouraging their kids to read have similar attitudes toward picture books as some of m y students had. Do they think of picture books as inherently not worthy of attention, even of their kids' attention, because they're specifically for kids? This seems like a tiny thing compared to stresses like working and childcare and the big stuff, but still, it could be another stumbling block that picture book supporters may want to consider.

Michele Regenold English instructor Nicolet Area Technical College Rhinelander, Wisc
Received on Sun 07 Nov 2010 12:04:19 PM CST