Investigating how picturebooks

support reading

comprehension

Reciprocal Reading Conference

Mary Anne Wolpert

‘In picture books, words and pictures are a fantastic double act, each doing a different job, maybe even telling a different story — but you need both of them to have the whole story. And even the youngest people are expert readers of pictures. So in pictures you can say very complex things, things that it would take an enormous number of words to explain.’

(Mini Grey, 2006)

The grammar of visual

design Kress and Van Leeuwen

Reading Picture Books 1. Relationship between word and image

(symmetrical, enhancement, counterpoint, contradiction)

2. Positioning

(of text on page, characters in relation to each other, ‘camera’ angles and perspective, white space)

3. Aesthetics

(colour and light, line, framing)

4. Intertextual links

5. Text cohesion

(pacing, intratextual links, vectors,)

2. Positioning

(of text on page, characters in relation to each

other, ‘camera’ angles and perspective, white

space)

3. Aesthetics

(colour and light, line, framing)

4. Intertextual links

5. Text cohesion

(pacing, intratextual links, vectors,)

Postmodern Picture Books Words and pictures interact

Deliberate boundary breaking

Traditional devices/endings resisted – interrupted reading experience, gaps to challenge the reader

Use of metafictive

Intertextual and intratextual links

Irony, parody, playfulness and humour

Shift in narrators’ positions

Multilayered, multiple meanings

Multimodality

Use of font

Research into children’s

responses Children Reading Pictures

‘Dipping into the cauldron: A case study of 6 children

reading and interpreting a complex picture book.’

Research questions

How would bilingual children use the relationship

between word and pictures to participate in meaning-

making?

What links to other texts would they make and how

would they fill the gap between text and reader with

their own experiences and interests?

How would talking at length about a book with peers

affect their understanding and engagement?

Analysis Reading word and image: filling in the gap

Intertextual links: creating shared worlds

Having a voice: the value of talk

The potential of picturebooks

Emotional engagement

Intellectual challenge

The capacity to stimulate and provide ways of demonstrating thinking

The potential to access deeper layers of meaning through the interpretation of word and image and the space between

The inspiration to talk and push language (Coulthard, 2003)