preview

The Bernstain Bears And The Spooky Old Tree

Good Essays

Children’s books, specifically for young children, are full of pictures that cause the stories to be more entertaining while contributing to the plot of the story. Early-stage children’s books are light in text and dense in pictures; as the stories progress the pictures increase. Stories such as The Bernstain Bears and The Spooky Old Tree by Stan and Jan Bernstain do not have a great deal of words and rely on pictures to provide setting, details, and help tell the story. Picture use is essential in child development and understanding of a story, as well as keeping the children interested in reading. Images are a crucial component in Children’s Literature, bringing stories to life for young children, as well as captivating readers and helping …show more content…

The words are used to communicate what absolutely needs to be articulated in the story; everything else is left to pictures. As young children have not mentally developed to a point where they can process and focus on a lot of detail being explained through words, illustration is utilized to place readers in the story. The primary audience for lower level children’s books is children between 4 and 6 years of age, in the pre-operational stage. ("Stages of Development") These children have short attention spans and need pictures to assist them in understanding the story, as well as providing the setting, details, and supplementing the images the children may be visualizing while reading. Throughout the Bernstain Bears, the pictures portray detail that the author was unable to provide in writing, based upon the development stage of the audience. Throughout the process, the illustrator and author work together to give the story greater depth and detail it would otherwise not have. Throughout the book great detail is put into the pictures to help explain what is going on in the scene while keeping their word count per page very low. This attention to detail is what brings reading alive for children, and makes them want to interact with books and learn more. When adults and teachers utilize the benefit of illustration throughout children’s texts they can supplement the reading and …show more content…

76) The University of Wollongong in Australia conducted a study to find how picture books, specifically those with extremely low word counts, can help children make connections and express matters in their lives, rather than living or seeing simply though the eyes of the characters. (Mantei, Jessica, 2014, pg. 76) In the study the children were read a picture book entitled Mirrors, which has a very low word count; they then created a presentation using art and short writing. (Mantei, Jessica, 2014, pg. 89) The low word count of the book provided a lot of space for the children to use their own lives to explain and share what they believed the book meant. (Mantei, Jessica, 2014, pg. 89) “It is interesting that these participants, with their diversity in cultural and social backgrounds selected similar pages in Mirror for their response. The students’ artwork appeared to reveal something of their personal identities and their competence within the out of school communities with which they engage.” (Mantei, Jessica, 2014, pg. 89) This exercise allowed the children to interpret the story through the lens of the experiences they have had, and share those with their classmates. This is valuable in demonstrating to

Get Access