Children's book

When we think of picture books, we immediately think of children's books, so in this post, I'll make a little contextualization of the picture book for children.

Actually, I'm more interested in picture books for adults (which sometimes can be for both) but it probably is a little weird to have a blog about illustration and never talk about children's books.

Most educators say children respond better to pictures than to words. But there is no irrefutable pedagogical or psychological reason why most of these stories are told with combinations of images and words. At the same time, there are some criticisms against this type of books, as they are just books from which the text was taken with the expectation of being restored by the reader (BECKETT, 2012: 81).

So, why have books with no text?

Probably because they are informative, most use illustrations to define words' meanings or tend to have a pedagogical function. 

In a 1975 French study of the image in children's books, Marion Durand and Gérard Bertrand choose to refer to these wordless “mini-stories” as books “to speak” rather than books without words. 

Traditionally, these books would be aimed at children, pre-readers, but Durand and Bertrand insist on the fact that they are intended to encourage children to talk and I find this fact really interesting. Who has never picked up one of these books to tell stories to parents instead of the other way around?

References

Beckett, S. L. (2012). Crossover picturebooks: A genre for all ages. Londres Routledge.