Rationale for Use of Picture Books with Older Learners
The use of picture books with secondary content-area classrooms has been the subject of several literacy journal articles recently.The article from The Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy(Carr et al) suggests a number of ways pictures books can be valuable and applied for use with adolescent learners.
Key points:
  • Like good literature, a good picture book uses rich vocabulary and well-crafted sentences.
  • Story and pictures are interdependent.
  • Illustrations are works of art, offering real appeal to visual learners.
  • Teachers work with picture books, reading aloud and pointing out the art, prose, character traits, the appreciation of nature shown in the story, and other fine qualities.
  • As educational materials for high school students, picture books can, amongst other things:
  • Increase motivation, understanding of concepts, aesthetic appreciation.
  • Provide accessible reading materials for less able readers and ESL students
  • Illustrate literary elements, like mood or metaphor and demonstrate patterns of creative writing, like compare and contrast or cause and effect
  • Relate content to the real world of concepts and careers
  • Provide insights into different cultures, historical periods and places
  • Demonstrate the illustrator's craft for students of art
Carr, K.S., D.L. Buchanan, J.B. Wentz, M.L. Weiss, & K.J. Brant. “Not just for primary grades: A
bibliography of picture books for secondary content teachers.” In Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 45:2 (October 2001). pp. 146-152.
NOTE: This full-text article can be found in the Thomson Gale Education Professional database linkfrom the vsb webcat database page.
Using picture books with older learners:
Not only do the books invite students to mull over the illustrations, but they also teach lessons through the integration of pictures and text. (49)
Readers construct meaning with a picture book in much the same way they do with other types of texts; the readers’ purposes for reading, prior knowledge, attitudes, and conceptual abilities determine in large part what and how the readers comprehend. (50)
[Picture books] can be used with older students as interesting schema builders, anticipatory sets to begin lessons, motivators for learning, read-alouds, and springboards into discussion and writing. (52)
Vacca, R.T. & J.L. Vacca.Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum.7th edition. Toronto: Allyn and Bacon, 2002.