Sunday, July 18, 2010

Ah, So This Is What You Do With Wordy Picture Books

I was speaking this morning with a young family member who is an elementary school teacher. We were discussing picture books that are long on text--specifically, Lincoln Tells a Joke. With these kinds of nonfiction books, there's too much text for traditional picture book readers, but older kids may not get credit for reading them for their class assignments. Whom does that leave?

Classroom teachers, our young teacher said. Books like Lincoln Tells a Joke would work well for classroom read-alouds. I told her about We Are The Ship, and she immediately said, "Fifth grade read-aloud" and rattled off a few topics it would support. She even suggested what time of year she'd use it.

Older kids, she explained, often enjoy having a picture book read to them even when they are no longer interested in taking them out of the library and reading them, themselves. Thus, those longer nonfiction picture books are still accessible to child readers, if an adult acts as a sort of go-between between book and child.

Mystery solved.

No comments: