Why Reading Picture Books Matters - by Natascha Biebow

The brains of three to five year-olds do something really important when they read a picture book:

Their neurons do a kind of brain gym that develops their ability to experience things from other people’s perspectives – or empathise.

This is because, at this age, children are acquiring a theory-of-mind – an understanding that other people have thoughts, beliefs, and desires that may be different from their own.
 
Dr. Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, says, “Around the same ages, children also begin to understand what characters in stories are feeling and thinking.”

Theory-of-mind tests include testing if a child is able to understand that someone may prefer broccoli over a cookie:

and how that is unique from their own desire for the cookie.

In 2010, Mar and his colleagues found that:

Mar and his colleagues also found that parents who were able to recognize children’s authors and book titles predicted their child’s performance on theory-of-mind tests. Parental recognition of adult book titles or authors had no effect on their child’s performance — the result was very specific to children’s books.

“There are aspects of joint-reading between parents and children that seem to be important to the process,” Mar said. 

This may be because when they read books together with their children, adults discuss how the characters are feeling, perhaps more so than at other times in daily life.

Researchers have also shown that children who watch a lot of TV, as opposed to reading storybooks, have a weaker understanding of other people's beliefs and desires, a lesser ability to be compassionate and reduced cognitive development.  

SO reading picture books and stories provides a means to muscle up children’s empathy network. Studies have also shown this is true for teens and adults, too.  

If we don’t use it, we could lose it . . .

In these troubled times, a world with empathy is the world I want for my children. 

Natascha Biebow

Author, Editor and Mentor

Blue Elephant Storyshaping is an editing, coaching and mentoring service aimed at empowering writers and illustrators to fine-tune their work pre-submission.  Check out my small-group coaching Cook Up a Picture Book courses!

Natascha is also the author of Elephants Never Forget and Is This My Nose?, editor of numerous award-winning children’s books, and Regional Advisor (Chair) of SCBWI British Isles.  www.blueelephantstoryshaping.com

An Ode to Libraries - Wendy Meddour

This month we are delighted to have Wendy Meddour as our guest blogger. Wendy spent many years teaching English Literature at Oxford University but took a little break so she could concentrate on writing children's books. Only (thankfully for us readers) that little break turned into a big break and, though she's back teaching at university, she still loves writing for children and really can't stop.


I wrote 'How the Library (Not the Prince) Saved Rapunzel' before they started shutting them all down! I hadn’t planned to write a book ‘with a message’. I was just writing a love letter to the places I loved:

The library was always a magical place for me. And on occasion, it was also my child-minder. I hated going into the city centre when I was little. All those stuffy shops, shopping bags and legs. So when Mum needed to go and wrestle with the crowds, I would ask her to leave me in the children’s section, cross-legged on the floor reading books. (What can I say? Things were different then). It was one of the highlights of my week. Shelves upon shelves of colour and thought – just waiting for me to jump in and get lost.

The library was my ‘Faraway Tree’: I’d climb its branches and know that it would always take me somewhere new. It was my passport and the place of my dreams. And I was allowed to take some of those journeys home. For free! Those childhood years, in which I sat cross-legged on the floor reading books (instead of being bruised by shopping bags) led me to where I am now ...  

I took my paper pockets of thought home and read them in the top of the airing cupboard. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a sociable soul and my outside-of-the-airing-cupboard childhood was a very happy place. But whilst I was curled up on the top shelf behind the towels, reading book upon book upon book, I learnt empathy, humour, compassion & escape! For a child in a fairly cramped space, my world became extraordinarily large. This undoubtedly helped me on my way. I did pretty well at school. I travelled. I married someone from completely somewhere else. I got a doctorate and taught English at Oxford University. I made a living out of reading and writing books! Libraries led to lots of good stuff. In fact, I hold libraries and their contents largely responsible for the shape and colour of my life! And my life to date has been rather colourful. So thank-you libraries - you were my Mrs Doubtfire. My Faraway Tree. My very own Nanny McFee. 

To conclude a post about libraries, it seems appropriate to end with 'Story Time'. So here's a little snippet from the end of my picture book. Beautifully illustrated by the very brilliant Rebecca Ashdown, it says all I want to say:

Now Rapunzel has changed and it makes her wince,

to think that she used to just wait for a prince!

That she used to just sit.

That she didn’t move –

with nowhere to go and nothing to prove!

For now she reads three books every night

Under the beam of her bedside light:

She can tell you the distance to the moon,

    she can do Scottish dancing & play the bassoon.

She can speak in four languages, skip and play chess,

she can knit tiny egg cups and cross stitch a dress,

She knows the difference between crows and rooks –

And all because of ...

  ... LIBRARY BOOKS!

So don’t just wait for a prince to show,

He might turn up, but you never know.

Just pop to your library and borrow a book –

There’s so much to find out if only you look:

But don’t just sit and wait and stare . . .

When there’s more to life than growing your hair!

To keep up to date with The Bookseller’s campaign on Twitter, follow: @fight4libraries

To keep up with me (now I'm out of the airing cupboard), click here

To read a great article about libraries by Neil Gaiman, click here 

And to see a jolly photo of Einstein, don't go anywhere! 

Are Picture Books Value For Money?

Not too long ago, I was in the picture book section of my local book shop, when I overheard a conversation where two people were discussing the cost of picture books. One lady was saying that she didn’t buy picture books anymore, because they were too expensive. She then went on to compare the price of a hardback picture book at £9.99 to an adult novel she was buying, at £7.99. 

And perhaps at first glance it can look like you’re getting a rough deal. After all, an adult novel can easily be over 100,000 words. It feels thick and chunky in your hand, something to really get your teeth into. On the other hand, some picture books don’t even get their word count into the hundreds.  Some don’t have any words at all. And yet the price points of adult and children’s books are often very similar.

But they are value for money. They really are. And here’s why. 

Often, you’re getting the combined talents of two people, a writer and an illustrator. Yes, of course, there are very talented people who can do both (such as James Mayhew, who wrote and illustrated one of the current favourite books in our house, Boy), many others, myself included, who can’t (my picture book, below, is illustrated by Dubravka Kolanovic). When people ask me if I illustrate my books, or ever think about illustrating my books, I generally snort with laughter, before replying; ‘No. Because I want people to buy them!’ I know where my talents lie. I can draw passable shapes, but nothing nearly as impressive as professional illustrators can, who make the books look so wonderfully appealing and bring the words I’ve written to life. Writers often need illustrators, and vice-versa – their talents combining together to make wonderful picture books. Therefore, there are two people who need paying for their work. And, quite frankly, it’s unrealistic to expect to get that for next to nothing. 

 

Then, there is the printing issue. Full colour, beautiful picture books, cost money to produce, whereas novels are generally just black and white print which is cheaper.  

The other argument is the time issue. People argue that picture books take a matter of minutes to read, while novels engage a reader for hours and therefore are much better value for money. But how often do you read a novel more than once? Of course, some people go back and re-read favourites, but generally not back to back, like children do with favourite picture books. In our house, the same book can be requested three or four times a day. A beloved picture book will get read and enjoyed over, and over again, sometimes on a daily basis, for years and years.  

Plus picture books are excellent teaching devices, a way for children to learn without knowing they’re learning. There’s so much to gain from talking about the pictures and the words, and important lessons to learn from them. Picture books form the foundation upon which a love of reading, and books, will grow.  

And all that, to me, is excellent value for money. 

Visit me online at www.karensaunders.co.uk

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Find me on Facebook www.facebook.com/karensaunderswriter

Reading for pleasure by Abie Longstaff

My 11 year old son has just learned to read.

I don't mean he has just learned to make sense of all those squiggles that are letters, I mean he has just learned to READ - for enjoyment and for himself.

He has always loved books and being read to.

He likes to make up stories (mainly while jumping on the sofa or building enormous armies of assorted figures). He likes to talk about books and characters and plots and he has a whole shelf of books on cd he snuggles down every night listening to. But, until recently, he has never enjoyed the act of reading.

His dislike for reading began shortly after he started school. I don't blame the school (his primary school was lovely) but I do think something is missing in the system, in the way we start our children on the curriculum so young. My boy was just 4 when he started school, one of the youngest in his class, and all he wanted to do was play. My bouncy, rambunctious child who couldn't sit down even to eat dinner, was suddenly expected to be quiet and still on the carpet, to learn his letters and practise writing. He was in no way ready for it (and I pity the poor teacher who had to control him.)

In my son's 4 year old mind the act of reading soon became work, not pleasure.  Reading was associated with homework, with effort and with chores. This association continued through primary school. Luckily he kept his love of books, which I encouraged by buying him comics and puzzle books and story cds. He also loved me reading to him each night. He was very capable of reading and would do it when he had to, he just couldn't see any joy in the process.

Alongside this he loved playing on the computer, the xbox or the ipad - for him these things were fun, nothing to do with homework or school.

Then, on holiday he borrowed his auntie's ipad. On it was the Hunger Games and, bored one afternoon, he started to read. He read and read and read till the end. I don't really know what did it - it could have been the book itself  - but I think what finally kick-started his reading was that the ipad was not associated with school or work, it was associated with fun. Whatever it was, he read all three Hunger Games books in the space of a month (while I silently danced a little jig).
 
Shame he didn't pick a classic but it could have been much worse - 50 Shades of Grey was stored on my sister's ipad too.

Reading Hairy Maclary as a new born baby