Reading For Research Month, Day 17

Friday's Reading for Research Month's presenter was teacher and podcast host Colby Sharp. He did a YouTube presentation on picture books that inspire creativity. His talk was primarily, if not totally, about books that inspire creativity in children. As a Reading for Research Month participant, you could take a couple of different things away from this:

• We could be looking at these mentor texts as examples of creativity-inspiring books we could be writing.
• We could be looking at these mentor texts for inspiration for ourselves. 

Let's see, how many of the suggested books did Gail manage to find and read? I hope you guessed just one.

Friday's Picture Books

The one book I read is Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat by Javaka Steptoe, who also illustrated Jimi by Gary Golio, about Jimi Hendrix. Steptoe, who, remember, is both author and illustrator, is clear in a foreward that he has not done any reproductions of Basquiat's work in this book. Readers "will find my original pieces that were inspired by my interpretations of his paintings and designs." An example of an author/artist's creativity being inspired by another's work. (See second bulleted item above.)

 One of the very impressive things about this book is that the illustrations carry the story very well, while at the same time often being very nonrepresentational. On many pages, you have a representational figure, or figures, primarily humans, in a nonrepresentational world.

By the way, Radiant Child won the Caldecott Medal.

Can I use Friday's creativity lesson in my picture book manuscript? Can I rework my text so it encourages creativity in child readers? Can I find something to better inspire my creativity with that book? Or make better use of the work that did inspire it? What would that be? you ask. Die Hard.

ReFoReMo Books Read To Date: 41