Do you remember the picture books that first brought you joy? The ones that were read to you before you could read, or the ones that sparked your imagination for the first time? When you think about these stories what do you see?
For most of us, we might see our favorite characters or the enchanting setting of our childhood books. We see the illustrations brought to life through our memories.
Picture books bring tremendous benefits to kids who are in the early stages of developing their reading skills. Illustrations shown alongside text offer invaluable tools to help kids build understanding, fluency, vocabulary and other foundational literacy skills. The imagery in a picture book brings the pages to life, serving as a visual roadmap for the story.
Here are five important benefits picture books bring to children who are learning to read.
As kids begin to speak and build sentences, they learn to recognize sounds and patterns within spoken language. This is known as phonological awareness and serves as the foundation for learning to read. The rhythmic cadence of many picture books helps kids develop and practice phonological awareness. Kids may start by repeating passages of their favorite picture books, then go on to make up their own similar rhymes or stories.
Dr. Seuss’ ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book! is a picture book that helps build phonological awareness while practicing letter sounds. “Big A little a, what begins with A? Aunt Annie’s Alligator. A…a…A.”
At a most basic level, picture books help kids understand that words convey meaning—connecting the pictures in the book with the words on the page. Kids will check pictures on the page for background knowledge or contextual clues for vocabulary development. They even use the images to learn the names of new objects.
You can ask a child, “Can you show me where the alligator is on this page?” or “What letter does the word alligator start with?”
By organizing the sequence of events in a story, kids can practice their ability to comprehend what they read. Mastering this skill starts with identifying beginning, middle, and end, and summarizing key events that take place (in order) throughout the story.
Visual aids and illustrations remind the reader what happened throughout the story and support their ability to confidently retell the key events. As kids hone their sequencing skills, let them look at the pictures to remind them what happened in the story. If they guess, and guess incorrectly, then use it as an opportunity to re-read the passage. This offers a chance to do an additional check for understanding.
Furthermore, books filled with pictures encourage kids to make predictions and inferences about what’s going to happen next. They can pair the words with the expressions and setting shown in the pictures to make an informed guess about what comes next in the story.
In Miss Nelson is Missing!, readers can infer that Ms. Viola Swamp is Miss Nelson in a costume. Clues in the book, such as the coincidental timing of Miss Nelson’s disappearance and the appearance of Ms. Swamp help lead to this inference.
As you read a book with a child, you are both likely making inferences throughout. The key to helping kids realize when they are making an inference is to talk through the inferences out loud throughout the book. Take breaks to ask questions: “How does Miss Nelson feel when kids misbehave in class?”, “Why do you think Ms. Viola Swamp was outside of Miss Nelson’s house?”, “What do you think happened to Miss Nelson?”.
There’s a lot to learn on the road to becoming a skilled reader. Along with sequencing and summarizing, there are many other essential skills kids must master in order to comprehend the text they read. Some of those skills include; sentence construction, problem solving, comparing and contrasting, drawing conclusions, inferring, and more.
Books rich with illustrations and photos offer many benefits to help enhance reading comprehension. Here are just a few of those benefits.
Pictures provide visual clues to help us discover more about the narrative.
Pictures show expressions, unwritten details, setting, and context that help us compare and contrast. These details allow us to analyze more complex details of character development.
Illustrations can provide important background knowledge and offer contextual cues based on what’s happening in the story. This helps us “read between the lines” to find meaning that may not be explicitly stated in the text.
When you think about your favorite childhood book, what comes to mind? You may see a sparkling fish with rainbow colors or a tree that gives everything in the name of selfless affection. Maybe you see your favorite characters or other-worldly settings.
The illustrations of a picture book can be enchanting, fun, and inspiring. They can tell a story of their own. Many of us remember picture books as the books that made us first fall in love with reading.
One key ingredient of picture books that we shouldn’t discount is the benefit of pictures in sparking joy and creating a fun and engaging reading experience for kids. Picture books do a better job of holding the attention of kids learning to read than books without pictures. And reading picture books with kids on a regular basis (ideally daily) can help them self-monitor their behavior until they can sit through a whole story and focus on the events.
When kids enjoy particular books or stories, they may ask to read the same book again and again. This is a good sign that this book sparks interest and intrigue for a young reader. Let kids choose the stories they love, read them often, and offer options to explore new books as well.
The subject matter in picture books can introduce social cues and cultural differences that encourage social-emotional development. Books that model social behaviors help hone social language skills and reinforce positive behavior.
In the book The Name Jar, a young Korean girl living in America is teased about her name, Unhei. A passage from the book reads, “She was relieved that the kids on the bus had gone to other rooms, but her face still felt red.” Marked by this bullying, she decides to search for a different name. Throughout the story her classmates and family show gentle kindness, support, and encouragement for Unhei until she is ready to introduce herself and her culture, as Unhei, to the rest of her classmates.
The Name Jar offers a chance for kids to practice empathy for Unhei and observe the outcome of kind, encouraging behavior compared to the negative effects of bullying.
Picture books also explore difficult subjects like fear, grief, taking risks, building friendships, self-control, and so much more. These books offer outlets for kids to explore challenging subjects in a format that’s approachable to them.
The illustrations in a book can help kids relate to the characters and setting portrayed. Picture books featuring protagonists of different identities, races, cultures, and abilities allow kids to relate to the texts where they see their own image reflected back. Furthermore, #ownvoices books written from the perspective of an author who shares a certain identity can provide an experience that’s profoundly relatable to kids’ differing experiences.
For example, Grace for President, allows young girls of color see themselves as future leaders in positions of power.
On The Children’s Book Review, author Lori Calabrese breaks down how books relate to child development and the importance of picture books:
We all want what’s best for our kids and like the Army commercial, we want them to be all they can be. But parents can often succumb to the pressures of society and other parents to compete. That’s why some parents buy everything imaginable to get their baby to read, they enroll their children in the most expensive preschools, and even skip picture books and encourage their children to move on to more text-heavy chapter books as a means to advance their skills for rigorous standardized testing.
It’s not a new issue, but it was recently brought back to the forefront by the NY Times article “Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children.” The article sadly reports that “The picture book, a mainstay of children’s literature with its lavish illustrations, cheerful colors and large print wrapped in a glossy jacket, has been fading.” Although the article reports that staples from Maurice Sendak and Dr. Seuss still sell, publishers have scaled back the number of titles. Citing the economic downturn as a major factor, the article points out that many in the industry see an additional reason—parents.
But while these parents are pushing their kids to be on top of the game, they don’t realize that the intensive coaching can be counterproductive and they’re missing out on an important genre, critical in the role of a child’s development—picture books.
10. Chapter books are not necessarily more complex than picture books and in fact, their vocabulary and sentence structure can be considered simplistic when compared with older-level picture books. Many picture books are written at a higher reading level, use amazingly complex vocabulary, and offer interesting plots.
9. The illustrations of a picture book help children understand what they are reading and allow young readers to analyze the story. When children are having difficulty, the illustrations can help them figure out the meaning of what they are reading. The illustrations are also a powerful way to help English learners comprehend the story.
8. Children love art. Why do you think they spend so much time coloring, drawing, and doing crafts? Whatever the reason children are drawn towards a book, it’s a means to get them to read.
7. Language: Picture books allow children to practice the sounds of language and as parents, it’s our responsibility to introduce new and interesting words at every opportunity. The rhythm and rhyme in many picture books make for a great read-aloud and children learn words more easily when they hear them spoken often.
6. Repetition: The repetition in many picture books allows a child to participate in the story. Young readers get excited when they can anticipate a forthcoming line and children learn skills like phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension, and fluency.
5. Picture books are multi-sensory, which aids a child’s growing mind and stimulates their imagination. Not only do the children hear the story, they see the illustrations and smell and touch the pages.
4. Picture books can be a useful tool for teaching the concept of cause and effect. Before reading a picture book to your children, tell them to listen for keywords such as because, so, if, then, as a result of, etc. These types of words can usually be found in a story that has a cause-and-effect relationship.
3. Picture books help develop story sense. Children learn the beginning, middle, and end of a story and can often relate to the age-appropriate issues and conflicts presented in a picture book.
2. Picture books allow an entirely different, more interactive communication between parent and child. Picture books allow parents to spend time talking with their children about the story, pictures, and words. This interaction builds reading comprehension. Picture books allow you to talk about what you see on each page, so be sure to talk about what happened in the story, ask about the characters, how they are feeling, and the events that took place.
1. Picture books are fun and the key is to always make the reading experience fun and a time to look forward to. Reading should never be perceived as a chore. If you make reading a chore early on in a child’s development, they might grow to resent reading. Children who don’t naturally progress from picture books to chapter books may translate reading into working – more specifically, working that isn’t much fun.
It’s unfortunate that parents are pushing their kid’s past picture books, just as some turn up their noses at graphic novels and magazines. It’s important to encourage your kids to get their hands on everything they can, including picture books, comics, and even kid-friendly websites. It doesn’t matter what they read as long as they read and children who learn to love books will be children who grow up to be good readers.
Check out the picture book reviews and book lists featured here on The Children’s Book Review
Teachers Pick the Top 25 Picture Books at Scholastic
About the author: Lori Calabrese is an award-winning children’s author. Her first picture book, The Bug That Plagued the Entire Third Grade, was awarded DFP’s Best Children’s Book Award. She writes for various children’s magazines, is the National Children’s Books Examiner at Examiner.com and enjoys sharing her passion for children’s books at festivals, schools and events. Visit her website to learn more, loricalabrese.com.
This article, How Picture Books Play a Role in a Child’s Development, was written by author Lori Calabrese. For similar articles, follow along with our content tagged with Literacy Resources and Picture Books.
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