Reading the Art in Picture Books
Description
Picture books are often a child’s first introduction to art. There’s a reason they are called “picture” books—sometimes the illustrations carry half or more of the narrative. Learn how text and illustrations work together to enhance readers' appreciation of this format. This 4-week asynchronous online course will prepare students to articulate why they like picture books by describing the artistic elements, media, style, and design.
Students will develop visual literacy skills and learn how to examine and evaluate picture books for both text and illustrations. This course is good preparation for reviewing picture books or serving on book award committees as well as for sharing picture books with children in a more expansive way. This course is fully asynchronous and will require approximately seven hours of commitment each week for completion.
Learning Objectives
Participants will
- Articulate how artistic elements within illustrations convey meaning.
- Identify the style and media of picture books.
- Examine peritext and design elements and describe how they contribute to the aesthetic appreciation of picture books.
- Develop strategies for reading picture books for evaluation purposes and sharing with children.
- Models and encourages use of culturally and ability diverse materials and services through bibliographies, booktalks, displays, electronic documents, social media and other tools. (2.8)
- Designs programs that foster a variety of literacies and learning methods including but not limited to pre-literacy, early literacy, family literacy, media literacy, technology literacy, computational thinking, STEM, and maker-centered learning (3.6)
- Advocates for and purchases materials by and about underrepresented communities, addressing the need for more representation from marginalized groups (5.3)
- Understands and applies criteria for evaluating the content, artistic merit, and cultural authenticity of children's materials and all genres and formats (4.5)
- Advocates on behalf of children and their families for the highest-quality library service. (5.3)
About the Instructors
Heidi Hammond is a former school librarian and a retired associate professor for the Master of Library and Information Science Program at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Gail Nordstrom is the Public Library Consultant for Viking Library System in rural western Minnesota. Both Heidi and Gail served on the 2011 Randolph Caldecott Award Committee and co-authored Reading the Art in Caldecott Award Books: A Guide to the Illustrations (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014). They've made numerous presentations about visual literacy in picture books and co-taught graduate level picture book courses as well as picture book courses for the Association of Library Services to Children. Gail and Heidi have each been recognized by the Minnesota Library Association with the William G. Asp Distinguished Career Award.