CCBC-Net Archives
The Whole Book Approach
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Megan Lambert <lambertmegan_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 07:13:53 -0700
Thanks so very much to Michael Clark for the shout-out about the Whole Book Approach, a storytime model I developed as an outgrowth of my graduate work at Simmons College and in association with The Carle, where I worked in the Education Department for nearly a decade. I teach full-time for Simmons now, but The Carle still leads WBA workshops and other programs, and I do hope those who are interested will check out their offerings www.carlemuseum.org. At Simmons, I teach a 2-credit graduate course on the Whole Book Approach, as well, and I am itching to start leading storytime again in some capacity.
I am thrilled to announce that I have written a book entitled *Storytime Stories: A Whole Book Approach to Reading Picture Books with Children*, which will come out in 2015 from Charlesbridge Publishing. It's the culmination of many years of work, and I hope it'll be a good resource for teachers, librarians, parents, and anyone who loves picture books and reading them with children. If anyone would like to be on a mailing list with Charlesbridge to be alerted about the book's release and associated events, please contact me at megan.lambert_at_simmons.edu off-list with your name, mailing address, and email. (I hope that's not too self-promoting for a listserv post! I admit to being a bit daunted by the whole marketing angle of publishing this book since I don't even have a Facebook page, and I hardly know where to begin. My apologies if I've overstepped).
In a nutshell (or at least an attempted one), I developed the Whole Book Approach as a co-constructive, art and design-focused storytime model in order to encourage children to talk about art and design during shared reading transactions. In other, less jargon-laden words, I wanted storytime to feel more like book discussion than performance, and I wanted to enable and empower children to make meaning of all they saw and heard when I led storytimes at The Carle and in outreach programs. I drew upon Visual Thinking Strategies, and also on Dialogic Reading, sometimes referred to as "hear and say reading" and envisioned what might be regarded as "SEE, hear, and say reading."
I started by simply naming design elements and parts of books and asking kids open-ended questions about them--everything from why one book was a portrait format and another landscape, or why endpapers adopted a certain design, and so on. this led to rich discussion about illustrations, too, and about how all of the parts of a picture book, words, pictures, design, and production elements, all work together to contribute to a reading experience.I documented hundreds of what I came to call "storytime stories" or anecdotes arising from these storytimes, and I pulled them together in book form, organized in large part with chapters devoted to the parts of the book. So, there is one chapter on endpapers, another on typography, and so on. In this way, I hope that the book will serve not only as a practical guide for people who want to integrate WBA techniques into their own storytimes, but also as a sort of primer on the picture book art form.
As I was writing the book, I was mindful of the sorts of questions this discussion is asking about the place of picture books in the digital age. I write a bit about how the picture book form, more than other kinds of books, relies on its materiality, its bookness, its thingness, its physical self, and about how I think this will enable the picture book to not only survive, but thrive in the digital age.. I envision what might be regarded as a two-tiered track of books--one in which ebooks evolve to make the most of digital platforms, and another in which the printed, bound codex, and especially the picture book codex, revels in its physicality.
Clearly, I could go on, but I don't want to hijack the conversation here, particularly because I am interested in hearing what others have to say. I am usually a lurker on this list, and I am so thankful for the thoughtful, vibrant discussion it generates on topics of all kinds. Thanks again to Michael for highlighting the Whole Book Approach, and I hope my colleagues from the 2011 Caldecott Committee, Gail Nordstrom and Heidi Hammond, will chime in about *their* new book, called Reading the Art in Caldecott Award Books, which I think would be invaluable to this discussion.
All the best,
Megan Lambert Senior Lecturer in Children's Literature Simmons College
==== CCBC-Net Use ==== You are currently subscribed to ccbc-net as: ccbc-archive_at_post.education.wisc.edu.
To post to the list, send message to...
ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
To receive messages in digest format, send a blank message to...
digest-ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to...
leave-ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
==== CCBC-Net Archives ==== The CCBC-Net archives are available to all CCBC-Net listserv members. The archives are organized by month and year. A list of discussion topics (including month/year) is available at...
http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ccbcnet/archives.asp
To access the archives, go to...
http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/ccbc-net
...and enter the following when prompted...
username: ccbc-net
password: Look4Posts Received on Wed 10 Sep 2014 09:14:27 AM CDT
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 07:13:53 -0700
Thanks so very much to Michael Clark for the shout-out about the Whole Book Approach, a storytime model I developed as an outgrowth of my graduate work at Simmons College and in association with The Carle, where I worked in the Education Department for nearly a decade. I teach full-time for Simmons now, but The Carle still leads WBA workshops and other programs, and I do hope those who are interested will check out their offerings www.carlemuseum.org. At Simmons, I teach a 2-credit graduate course on the Whole Book Approach, as well, and I am itching to start leading storytime again in some capacity.
I am thrilled to announce that I have written a book entitled *Storytime Stories: A Whole Book Approach to Reading Picture Books with Children*, which will come out in 2015 from Charlesbridge Publishing. It's the culmination of many years of work, and I hope it'll be a good resource for teachers, librarians, parents, and anyone who loves picture books and reading them with children. If anyone would like to be on a mailing list with Charlesbridge to be alerted about the book's release and associated events, please contact me at megan.lambert_at_simmons.edu off-list with your name, mailing address, and email. (I hope that's not too self-promoting for a listserv post! I admit to being a bit daunted by the whole marketing angle of publishing this book since I don't even have a Facebook page, and I hardly know where to begin. My apologies if I've overstepped).
In a nutshell (or at least an attempted one), I developed the Whole Book Approach as a co-constructive, art and design-focused storytime model in order to encourage children to talk about art and design during shared reading transactions. In other, less jargon-laden words, I wanted storytime to feel more like book discussion than performance, and I wanted to enable and empower children to make meaning of all they saw and heard when I led storytimes at The Carle and in outreach programs. I drew upon Visual Thinking Strategies, and also on Dialogic Reading, sometimes referred to as "hear and say reading" and envisioned what might be regarded as "SEE, hear, and say reading."
I started by simply naming design elements and parts of books and asking kids open-ended questions about them--everything from why one book was a portrait format and another landscape, or why endpapers adopted a certain design, and so on. this led to rich discussion about illustrations, too, and about how all of the parts of a picture book, words, pictures, design, and production elements, all work together to contribute to a reading experience.I documented hundreds of what I came to call "storytime stories" or anecdotes arising from these storytimes, and I pulled them together in book form, organized in large part with chapters devoted to the parts of the book. So, there is one chapter on endpapers, another on typography, and so on. In this way, I hope that the book will serve not only as a practical guide for people who want to integrate WBA techniques into their own storytimes, but also as a sort of primer on the picture book art form.
As I was writing the book, I was mindful of the sorts of questions this discussion is asking about the place of picture books in the digital age. I write a bit about how the picture book form, more than other kinds of books, relies on its materiality, its bookness, its thingness, its physical self, and about how I think this will enable the picture book to not only survive, but thrive in the digital age.. I envision what might be regarded as a two-tiered track of books--one in which ebooks evolve to make the most of digital platforms, and another in which the printed, bound codex, and especially the picture book codex, revels in its physicality.
Clearly, I could go on, but I don't want to hijack the conversation here, particularly because I am interested in hearing what others have to say. I am usually a lurker on this list, and I am so thankful for the thoughtful, vibrant discussion it generates on topics of all kinds. Thanks again to Michael for highlighting the Whole Book Approach, and I hope my colleagues from the 2011 Caldecott Committee, Gail Nordstrom and Heidi Hammond, will chime in about *their* new book, called Reading the Art in Caldecott Award Books, which I think would be invaluable to this discussion.
All the best,
Megan Lambert Senior Lecturer in Children's Literature Simmons College
==== CCBC-Net Use ==== You are currently subscribed to ccbc-net as: ccbc-archive_at_post.education.wisc.edu.
To post to the list, send message to...
ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
To receive messages in digest format, send a blank message to...
digest-ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to...
leave-ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
==== CCBC-Net Archives ==== The CCBC-Net archives are available to all CCBC-Net listserv members. The archives are organized by month and year. A list of discussion topics (including month/year) is available at...
http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ccbcnet/archives.asp
To access the archives, go to...
http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/ccbc-net
...and enter the following when prompted...
username: ccbc-net
password: Look4Posts Received on Wed 10 Sep 2014 09:14:27 AM CDT
