3321: Picture Books

Picture books are books that communicate information or tell stories through a series of many pictures combined with relatively slight texts or no text at all. The important thing about these books is that the pictures are just as important or even more important than the text. Many of these books are used for young children but can also be used for the older ones. These types of books can be used for various reasons. Nursery rhymes help stimulate oral language development while wordless picture books encourage children to find objects in pictures, tell their own stories, and become a creative writer. These books are also good to read aloud to your students.
When choosing picture books there can be certain limitations. We must first check the relationship between the words and the pictures. This is where we make sure the picture is just as important as the text. We must also take into consideration the child's age and stage of cognitive and social development. We should also be aware whether the adult has prepared or not prepared the child for this experience, the child's emotional state of readiness is also important. In order to see if the child is interested we should check how many times the child looks at the illustration, a child will always show their interest this way.
I personally like picture books, I think they are more interesting to a child. From personal experience I can see that my children pay more attention when there are more pictures than text. I think it is a good idea to use these in your classroom only because sometimes pictures can explain things better than words themselves. It is also a way to let the child use their imagination when letting them create a story with the pictures, rather than us as teachers reading the story to them. I think picture books are just great and I really don't think that I would leave them out of my classroom library or my personal home library.