Keats once said, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” Some would say the same about a picture book. Many teachers and librarians believe that picture books aren’t just for the wee ones, and they are using them with older readers, for a variety of reasons. PW spoke with three such educators who find picture books timeless, ageless, and beautiful, indeed.
Latrice Martin, currently a K–5 librarian at Wilbern Elementary School in Wilbern, Tex., loves how picture books help her gently introduce difficult topics to her readers. “They can break down big concepts into smaller and simpler ways to understand them, and kids love them, too!” Martin said. She also uses the illustrations with her younger students to better understand what is happening in the story. With her older students, for whom school is often harder, she takes a more mindful, almost zen approach. “We can slow down—look at the pictures, talk about what the illustrators are trying to tell us, and take our time.”
After digging deeply into these picture books, she often finds her students beelining to shelves to check out the latest titles she has shared. So, selling picture books to kindergarten through fifth graders isn’t hard. As for campaigning for the value and importance of picture books to some of her upper elementary teachers, that is a different story. Martin says that many teachers require their students to choose two chapter books, and no picture books for their weekly check outs. That’s when she speaks up, professing the power of picture books. “I instruct them while I’m teaching my students,” Martin said. “I tell them that it’s not that they’re easy books, it’s just the format that they are in. These books have so much information in them, along with sophisticated vocabulary!”
It’s why Martin’s school district has specifically named every school library’s picture book section “Everybody Reads!” Martin said, “That’s because they really are for everyone. They’re all mixed together because everybody reads at different levels and/or they have somebody who can read to them.”
And, when an older child checks out a picture book, Martin is quick to celebrate their choice. “I don’t want anyone to ever think that it means they’re not capable of reading a chapter book or higher,” Martin said.
As a school librarian she believes her greatest responsibility to her students is helping them find books that they’re interested in reading, and advocating for free choice. “Their interest and freedom helps foster a love of reading and books. We never force kids to read a book, or stop a child from checking out a book that might be too hard, because someone at home can read it to them. We also do not give them accelerated reading quizzes after each book,” Martin said. “Introducing and celebrating picture books in our library is part of promoting a love of literacy.”
Martin appreciates how older readers bring greater life experience to picture books. “They relate better to the characters. And you can go back to earlier reading skills they have learned, and teach how many formats of nonfiction books—including picture books—can give us information.”
This year, Martin is returning to the classroom to teach mathematics and science, because of Texas budget cuts, but she is hopeful that she will be back in the library again one day. Until then, she says, “Even if I’m not in the library, the love of reading—especially reading picture books—is something that I will still share with my students.”
One of Stacy Alfano’s graduate school professors shared picture books at the start of nearly every class. “He was a big collector of picture books and he would read these books and we’d talk about how we could use each of them and what age we might use them for,” she said. The experience stuck with her. Today, as a veteran fifth grade ELA and social studies teacher at Shoemaker Elementary School in Macungie, Pa., Aflano incorporates picture books as part of her curriculum. Some of the stories’ themes include empathy, the power of knowledge, grit, and perseverance, and more. “The picture books we use allow us to teach concepts within the context of the books and aid comprehension, all within an enjoyable story,” Alfano said.
She also integrates “access lenses” highlighted in Trevor Bryan’s book The Art of Comprehension: Exploring Visual Texts to Foster Comprehension, Conversation, and Confidence to help discuss picture books through the lenses of mood, theme, and symbolism, and deepen her students’ understanding and thinking about words and pictures.
“These lenses allow us to zoom into the language and the illustrations, like how the illustrator may draw something larger to draw attention to it to help tell the story,” Alfano said, “They also encourage readers to look at characters’ traits, their body language, moods, and the symbolism and figurative language that the author uses.”
Throughout her 31 years of teaching, she has pulled in a variety of her favorite classic picture books to reinforce concepts, and to help elevate her students’ reading and writing, too. These titles include The King Who Rained by Fred Gwynne to look at homophones, The Z Is Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg to teach verb tenses, and Animalia by Graeme Base to study adjectives and adverbs. She also stays up to date on the latest picture book releases as a member of #BookPosse (a group of teachers and librarians on Twitter who share and recommend ARCs), and by reviewing picture books on Twitter.
Just like she learned from her former professor, she is always reading and asking questions about how best to use picture books, and decipher which ones would be the perfect fits for her fifth graders. She’s also always on the lookout for SEL titles that can touch her students’ hearts, and help them deal with difficult things in their lives. Her latest favorite is the picture book Grandpa’s Scroll by Ginger Park and Frances Park. Based on the authors’ Korean heritage, this title is about a girl whose grandfather is working on a scroll for them to finish when she visits him in Korea. “And, one day, he passes away before they can finish it,” Alfano said. “I used it right after one of my students’ grandparents died. The healing part was how people’s legacies live beyond when they are not with us anymore.”
Alfonso said that the “knowing” that can come from fiction and nonfiction picture books allows her to teach her students the value of using a variety of formats and resources to learn from, to use for their research, and to discover book joy through a read aloud. “It doesn’t matter what your age is. There is something powerful about being read to!”
A few years ago, Jessica Liakonis, a humanities teacher at Willis Road School in Roslyn Heights, N.Y., began the #ClassroomBookADay daily read-aloud challenge (the brainchild of elementary school library media specialist and former seventh and eighth grade ELA teacher, Jillian Heise) with her middle school students, and it changed everything.
“At first, I started it as a daily shared read-aloud to promote joyful, thoughtful engagement, and to support my children’s development of empathy,” Liakonsis said. “It has grown to help them explore their identity in the classroom, and to see themselves, their cultures, and their ethnic backgrounds,” she added.
But her kids needed more. So, she decided to include nonfiction biographies, narrative nonfiction titles, and select SEL books that would directly tie into their reading/writing, ELA/social studies curriculum, and middle school life. These choices have helped her teach and discuss difficult topics including grief, antisemitism, and illness, among many others, and her kids build valuable background knowledge through the context of stories.
“These daily read-alouds have increased the reading engagement of my students. They look forward to this time of day, and come up to me and ask about the book we are reading every single day,” Liakonis said. “I also place a tiny version of the cover on a bulletin board in our classroom.”
This board offers her and her students a visual reminder of the books they’ve read together, discussed, and learned from. It also allows them to refer back to past titles. “Right now, we’ve had 170 days and 170 covers on the board, and we are constantly going back to these books to make connections and to use them for mentor texts for their own writing.”
Lakonis has also noted a general uptick in her students’ reading across the board. She’s observed them checking out and reading more chapter books and novels in addition to the #ClassroomBookADay picture books and novel study titles they enjoy together as a class. She believes the read-alouds have made a big impact on their reading and writing lives.
“These 10 minutes and these picture books have allowed us to listen to stories that have touched us quite powerfully—whether in an empathetic way or by seeing ourselves, our families, and our ethnicities represented,” Liakonis said. “As we read them, we may naturally stop and talk about them, make inferences and conclusions, and absorb the rich vocabulary and figurative language. Each title has also helped my students become more thoughtful readers and writers.”
In their “during reading” and “post reading” conversations, she has also seen an increasing comfort level of students’ willingness to share themselves through books. “My middle schoolers are growing up so fast. So, reading together slows them down, and lets them be more vulnerable with each other—without really knowing that they are doing this,” Liakonis said. “They share things in our picture book discussions that they probably wouldn’t have shared otherwise in class.”
This shared vulnerability and emotional intelligence elevates all of them. “These books have helped create a community where 90% of my middle grade students feel comfortable to share their thoughts and feelings,” Lakonis said. “This has lifted all of us up.”
