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)