The New York Times ran an article this week on the impact that a drop in picture book sales is having on the publishing industry. One reason that parents have given for not purchasing picture books is that they want their pre-school aged children to begin reading chapter books to better prepare them for standardized testing. You can read the article here.
The fact emphasized in the Times article that picture books build critical thinking skills cannot be emphasized enough. As Perry Nodelman and Mavis Reimer point out in The Pleasures of Children's Literature, the basic interplay between text and image brings with it significant interpretive challenges. For instance, in order for a child to gain a satisfying understanding of the page above, taken from David Wiesner's The Three Pigs, her repertoire would need to contain knowledge regarding anthropomorphism, fairy tale conventions, and picture book layout.
Parents are not the only constituency worried about the connection between reading and standardized test performance, however. One of my dissertation mentees recently visited a school in order to share a set of graphic novels with an English class, and she was shocked when many of the kids asked her if the time they spent that day "looking at pictures" would "pay off" on the MEAP (Michigan Education Assessment Program -- our state's version of standardized testing).
Beyond literacy concerns, many parents may avoid purchasing picture books for financial reasons -- picture books cost a great deal -- usually $18-20 -- and they do not always hold up well in the hands of rambunctious young readers. I'd be very interested to learn if libraries are seeing a drop-off in picture book borrowing, as I suspect that most parents -- even middle class parents who are anxious about their children's reading habits -- are unwilling to spend hundreds of dollars on picture books when the same texts are available on loan.
One of my ardent wishes is that parents would treat their children's literary interests with more respect. I understand the argument that children need to be introduced to material that challenges them, but children are also individuals who possess just as complex a set of reasons behind their decision-making as do adults. Childhood is stressful under the best of circumstances, and adults should not be surprised if a six year-old might enjoy reading a familiar and comforting text in order to engage in a temporary escape -- just the way his parents might read a favorite novel in order to unwind after a difficult day of maintaining the illusion of maturity.
