Anne Burke and Shelley Stagg Peterson argue that "picture books offer a medium for teaching visual and critical literacy across the curriculum." To support this idea, they describe a multidisciplinary unit on World War II that pushes high school students to utilize visual and print literacies to analyze, comprehend, and relate to public events and…

A writer and illustrator of works for very young children outlines his approach to the creation of picture books and suggests areas that need to be researched about their role in the development of visual and verbal literacy in children. (RBW)

This essay discusses 13 pictorial devices with which one must be familiar to understand the illustrations in Virginia Lee Burton's "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel." Color constancy, implied background, sharply drawn lines, abstractions of caricature, use of perspective, face on objects, and picture book narration are noted. (EJS)

Discusses ways in which the integrated design of all the components of picture books can facilitate both visual and verbal literacy, allowing children to refine literary and aesthetic appreciation and improve their own expressive activity. A bibliography of well-designed picture books is provided. (16 references) (CLB)

This paper will explore aspects of past practice and belief and how relevant these are to the future. New Zealand Curriculum guidelines for English will be examined in relation to best practice. Oral and visual texts will be discussed, as will the blurring of the boundaries between written and visual text with examples from picture books and…

Discusses importance of the ability to visualize images evoked by the written word in the development of children's skills in both reading and creative writing. Specific skills involved are noted, examples from picture books are given, and 48 picture books that would be useful to developing such skills are listed. (EM)

This article describes the "Add-a-Page Assignment" in which students choose a picture book to which they would add a page, imitating both the style and artistic medium of the illustrator and the writing style of the author. In this article, the author begins with quotes from students who have very different learning styles and vastly different…

While literacy is an important part of anyone's education, it should be noted that visual literacy, being able to view, interpret and react to visuals, is just as important for today's population. College students are reluctant at first to take the time to really examine a picture book, whereas youngsters go over and over their favorite books to…

Visual literacy--seeing with insight--enables child viewers of pictures to examine elements such as color, line, shape, form, depth, and detail to see what relations exist both among these components and between what is in the picture and their previous visual experience. The viewer can extract meaning and respond to it, either by talking or…

Discusses the use of picture books of folk tales to develop literature appreciation and cultural awareness in children and the need to select books that retain the style of the original version of the folk tale, rather than loose adaptations of the story. (CLB)