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  • Emerging Literacy of (an)other kind:Speakerly Children's Picture Books
  • Michelle Pagni Stewart (bio)

In a recent article published in Early Childhood Research & Practice, Jean Mendoza and Debbie Reese discuss the strengths and weaknesses inherent in using multicultural picture books in the classroom.1 Their article focuses on the accuracy of ethnic books for children as well as the problems that arise when teachers do not understand enough about the ethnicity depicted in the book to assist young readers adequately in learning about and understanding cultures that are different from their own. In discussing the instructional uses of picture books for children, Mendoza and Reese acknowledge the way that picture books can benefit a child's development of literacy and language. Another kind of literacy and language development can occur when children are exposed to certain ethnic picture books: that of understanding and appreciating oral traditions valued by many ethnic cultures.

Perry Nodelman, in his seminal study of picture book theories, Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children's Picture Books, considers how children must learn to "read" illustrations in picture books. He explains that young children, especially those who have not learned to read yet—a significant audience of picture books—need to acquire certain "skills" that are presumed by those who write and illustrate books for children. In particular, he argues, children need to learn that books must be held a certain way, that they have a front and back (and thus a beginning and end), that events occur sequentially, and that the world of illustrations is not always directly related to the world readers observe (22-34). As Nodelman argues, reading pictures requires a sophisticated reader and viewer. Less difficult, though, is the role the young child takes on as a participant in the oral telling of the story. Through listening, children become participants in and often co-creators of the story, thus acquiring a skill as significant as that of reader, a skill many children and adults take for granted by privileging the story and the teller over the listener. In contrast, oral traditions recognize the significance of the listener/audience to any story since a storyteller needs a recipient for the story, and that recipient will generally determine how the story is told and which explanations or deviations become part of the story. Cultures that continue to respect and preserve oral traditions will often find ways to replicate aspects of orality in written texts, simultaneously valuing oral over written texts (despite their being written) and privileging the ethnic traditions from which the stories come over the more "standard" European traditions. Yet because so many of those reading and teaching picture books do not know of or understand the significance of orality, attempts to render orality through the written text may lead to confusion or criticism of a text attempting to do so. Books that bridge the gap between written and oral texts may not be seen from this dual perspective, which will result in a missed opportunity to awaken young readers to becoming more "literate" in oral traditions and ethnic cultures.

While both the pictures and the stories are essential aspects of children's picture books, in some books the words and the pictures replicate oral traditions, bridging the gap between oral and written texts, becoming what Henry Louis Gates, Jr., identifies as speakerly texts. Whereas the illustrations in many picture books serve to narrate the gaps of the written text, at times the illustrations or layout may also create gaps. These gaps—whether easy to close or constantly gaping, whether gaps of text or gaps of image2—serve an important function for the audience of a text since they encourage the readers (those who "read" the pictures as well as those who read the words) to become shapers of a text. Texts without any gaps will quickly become routine, and the life of the text will be diminished. Anyone who has read the same picture book repeatedly (and anyone who has or knows children will fit into this category) understands the significance of these gaps in that they encourage readers of both kinds to vary the story in successive readings. In...

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