Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking about What They See

A new, interactive approach to storytime, The Whole Book Approach was developed in conjunction with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and expert author Megan Dowd Lambert's graduate work in children's literature at Simmons College, offering a practical guide for reshaping storytime and getting kids to think with their eyes.

Traditional storytime often offers a passive experience for kids, but the Whole Book approach asks the youngest of readers to ponder all aspects of a picture book and to use their critical thinking skills. Using classic examples, Megan asks kids to think about why the trim size of Ludwig Bemelman's Madeline is so generous, or why the typeset in David Wiesner's Caldecott winner,The Three Pigs, appears to twist around the page, or why books like Chris Van Allsburg's The Polar Express and Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar are printed landscape instead of portrait. The dynamic discussions that result from this shared reading style range from the profound to the hilarious and will inspire adults to make children's responses to text, art, and design an essential part of storytime.

Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking about What They See

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Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking about What They See

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Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking about What They See

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Overview

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580896627
Publisher:	Charlesbridge
Publication date:	11/03/2015
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	278,472
Product dimensions:	7.70(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Megan Dowd Lambert is an instructor at the Center for the Study of Children's Literature at Simmons College, where she previously earned her master's degree in children's literature. She writes about books and parenting for the Horn Book Magazine, has sat on a Caldecott Committee, and worked at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art for many years before writing A CROW OF HIS OWN, her first picture book.

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Picture book expert and educator Megan Dowd Lambert proposes an exciting alternative to traditional storytime: the Whole Book Approach. This dynamic new model focuses on the picture book as a visual art form and invites children to become active participants in making meaning of all they see and hear during a shared reading. The discussions that result from these storytimes range from teh profound to the hilarious and will inspire adults to make children's responses to text, art, and design an integral part of storytime.

Take a look inside and read the foreword by picture book author/illustrator Chris Raschka and Megan Dowd Lambert's preface to learn more about the Whole Book Approach and sharing picture books with children.

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Editorial Reviews

An in-depth exploration of the author's Whole Book Approach: a way to slow storytime down and consider children's responses to art, design, and other visual elements.
Lambert honed her new storytime style while sharing picture books at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. She began by using traditional methods but realized that she was representing a museum; she should focus on art and the notion of a book as an art form. Taking cues from the open-ended questions used by the Carle museum's docents, Lambert created a similar approach toward reading with children. With chapters devoted to trim size and orientation, jackets and covers, endpapers, typography, and more, there really is no better way to say it: Lambert delves into the "whole book." Librarians may quake at the thought of inviting so much discussion while reading stories to a large group, but Lambert calms fears with repeated (and adorable—such as the "heightful tower" of Madeline) examples from her many years of practice. She also shares tips and tricks to regain focus if a group goes awry. Traditionalists' concerns that the integrity of the story might be compromised by many interruptions are unfounded; Lambert rightly stresses that reading both the words and the art are equally important and provides ample evidence of children's increased engagement with the books being shared.
Welcome permission to shake things up, with an important acknowledgment of the art form at the core of modern storytimes.
-Kirkus Reviews
Lambert, a lecturer at Simmons College, provides a guidebook to the Whole Book Approach, a “co-constructed (interactive) storytime model centered on the picture book as a visual art form,” an approach developed at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Despite the title, the Whole Book Approach is really more child- centered than book-centered, focusing on the ways children interact with books and emphasizing their experiences of what they see and hear during a storytime rather than analyzing the text or pictures. Lambert’s thoughtful introduction discusses her own struggles with learning to decode pictures and her subsequent education in all things picture book, including layout, medium, style, etc. Chapters include overviews of trim size, jackets and covers, endpapers, front matter, typography, page design, and perhaps most helpfully, a guide to encouraging visual intelligence among children and the benefits of her approach. Resources includes tips on creating and leading Whole Book storytimes, sample questions for Whole Book storytimes, a glossary and further reading.
-The Bulletin of The Center for Children's Books

Lambert’s Whole Book Approach challenges librarians to think differently about how they share a picture book in a group setting. It asks adult readers to value the opinions of young listeners and to engage them to become active participants as they try to make meaning of all they see and hear during a shared reading. This volume gives concrete examples and practical tips on how to do a shared reading based on the Whole Book Approach; through a conversational style and clear directions, Lambert offers support for librarians and teachers testing out new ways of engaging young listeners. The author developed this method during her graduate studies in children’s literature at Simmons College and while working in the Education Department of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. As she points out, the Whole Book Approach method of sharing picture books starts right on the title page—adults share vocabulary information about the various parts of a physical book. Lambert goes on to dedicate individual chapters to “Jackets and Covers,” “Endpapers,” “Front Matter,” “Typography,” and “Page Design” and spends a good deal of time on how to foster a child’s visual intelligence. The author’s storytime anecdotes are funny, touching, and ultimately illuminating, highlighting how this approach can open new avenues to explore with children. VERDICT An essential purchase for any educator wanting to understand and apply the Whole Book Approach in their storytimes, or for those who would like to better understand the various parts and wonders of the picture book as a unique art form.
-School Library Journal

From the Publisher

Lambert is an enthusiastic admirer of codex-design picture books (as opposed to ebooks) both as art and as vehicles for children to acquire visual literacy. From her extensive experience with children, she has developed an approach to reading with them by considering all elements of book design and letting kids talk about what they see as they explore a picture book. Calling her method the “Whole Book Approach,” she introduces teachers, librarians, and parents to it, starting with the trim size of the pages and a book’s vertical or horizontal orientation, letting children speculate as to what they imply. She sees a book’s jacket as a poster for a performance, then having kids look under it at the cover art for possible clues to what is coming. The chapter on endpapers is especially interesting when the reader thinks of them as an overture, illustrated by the author’s example of yellow endpapers used in Hush, Little Baby by artist Marla Frazee and seeing how that color becomes important throughout the book. Lambert explains a book’s “front matter”—frontispiece, title page, copyright page, dedications, prefaces and introductions—and what an adult can learn from children’s perceptions about them. The decisions artists, editors, and book designers make are considered in chapters on gutters and the placement of illustrations, frames for pictures or text (also their absence), recto-verso design, and typography. Exploring all of them and talking about them, Lambert says, lead children to visual literacy while developing insights about and comparisons among picture books. Some teachers have probably done several or all of these things on their own, but for those who have simply read to children without much response or focus on a book’s art and design, her ideas are challenging and informative. She stresses that the Whole Book Approach is not prescriptive, but can be used as a teacher feels appropriate; the book is full of anecdotes about children’s comments and observations. For those who would like to try Lambert’s approach, a list of sample questions is provided with answers about actually leading such discussions and ways to get young children involved. A glossary of book design and storytime terms will be helpful for reference, as will a sizeable picture book bibliography. Reviewer: Barbara L. Talcroft; Ages 17 up.

Children's Literature - Barbara L. Talcroft

★ 01/01/2016
Lambert's Whole Book Approach challenges librarians to think differently about how they share a picture book in a group setting. It asks adult readers to value the opinions of young listeners and to engage them to become active participants as they try to make meaning of all they see and hear during a shared reading. This volume gives concrete examples and practical tips on how to do a shared reading based on the Whole Book Approach; through a conversational style and clear directions, Lambert offers support for librarians and teachers testing out new ways of engaging young listeners. The author developed this method during her graduate studies in children's literature at Simmons College and while working in the Education Department of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. As she points out, the Whole Book Approach method of sharing picture books starts right on the title page—adults share vocabulary information about the various parts of a physical book. Lambert goes on to dedicate individual chapters to "Jackets and Covers," "Endpapers," "Front Matter," "Typography," and "Page Design" and spends a good deal of time on how to foster a child's visual intelligence. The author's storytime anecdotes are funny, touching, and ultimately illuminating, highlighting how this approach can open new avenues to explore with children. VERDICT An essential purchase for any educator wanting to understand and apply the Whole Book Approach in their storytimes, or for those who would like to better understand the various parts and wonders of the picture book as a unique art form.—Renee McGrath, Nassau Library System, Uniondale, NY

School Library Journal

2015-08-31
An in-depth exploration of the author's Whole Book Approach: a way to slow storytime down and consider children's responses to art, design, and other visual elements. Lambert honed her new storytime style while sharing picture books at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. She began by using traditional methods but realized that she was representing a museum; she should focus on art and the notion of a book as an art form. Taking cues from the open-ended questions used by the Carle museum's docents, Lambert created a similar approach toward reading with children. With chapters devoted to trim size and orientation, jackets and covers, endpapers, typography, and more, there really is no better way to say it: Lambert delves into the "whole book." Librarians may quake at the thought of inviting so much discussion while reading stories to a large group, but Lambert calms fears with repeated (and adorable—such as the "heightful tower" of Madeline) examples from her many years of practice. She also shares tips and tricks to regain focus if a group goes awry. Traditionalists' concerns that the integrity of the story might be compromised by many interruptions are unfounded; Lambert rightly stresses that reading both the words and the art are equally important and provides ample evidence of children's increased engagement with the books being shared. Welcome permission to shake things up, with an important acknowledgment of the art form at the core of modern storytimes. (FAQ, sample storytime questions, glossary, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. Adult)

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