Abstract
In this article, I will examine the use of picture books as a means of supporting the intellectual pursuits of young children. Theoretical frameworks will be discussed as they pertain to the integration of these books in the Municipal Infant Toddler Centers and Preschools of Reggio Emilia and Pistoia, Italy. The pedagogical framework of these schools will be discussed depicting how the sociocultural and the constructivist theories are evident and developed through the careful guidance provided through the triangulation of school personnel, community, and the home. This triangulation places the child at the center of their own learning through investigations, inquiry, and curiosity. A focus will be on the use of picture books in the Italian school culture and how the artistic genre of these books plays an important role in the transference of ideas and subliminal but important messages of literacy.
“Immersing children in meaningful books and literary experiences at an early age, in the home, and continuing this practice in schools and classrooms may be dependent on culture and socioeconomic status.”
A picture book is text, illustrations, total design; . . . a social, cultural, historic document; and foremost, an experience for a child. As an art form it hinges on the interdependence of pictures and words, on the simultaneous display of two facing pages, and on the drama of the turning of the page. On its own terms its possibilities are limitless.
Picture book composition is complex, developed with specificity, and created with an interplay between pictures and words. Picture books have an intentional design with little text that is not carefully planned. Each dot, dash, letter, and stance of a character is detailed, and each artistic illustration carries meaning. This type of genre is more than just pictures illustrating text. Picture books send a message with intent and purpose, and often focus on an intended audience.
Pictures and illustrations help students construct and build knowledge. They build upon schema. Through interpretation of the visual images, a child can invoke schema that enhances understanding of the text. Serafini (2014) suggests, “Wordless picture books may be the best platform for introducing many narrative conventions, reading processes and visual strategies to readers of all ages” (p. 26). This would hold true as well through the lens of diverse learners where words are not the focal point but the pictures tell a story. It is through picture books that children become immersed in storytelling, investigate their wondering, and see the world beyond the limits of their immediate surroundings. Children and adults from all corners of the earth reap the messages picture books send in a fictional, informational, or nonfiction format. How then do young children of Italy, in particular, the Municipal Infant Toddler Centers and Preschools of Reggio Emilia and Pistoia, integrate and create a culture of picture book usage into the pedagogical framework of their schools?
Theoretical Thinking
Through the constructs of the Reggio approach-inspired pedagogy and curricular design, as well as nurturing and responsive teaching, young children are guided and supported, and make sense of what the world has to offer. This approach is metacognitive in its framework and is founded, as well as accomplished, through researched theoretical frameworks and philosophical beliefs.
Communication skills, language acquisition, and deciphering print are goals parents and teachers have for children. An overarching outcome is to make meaning out of what is spoken, heard, and/or read in a specific context or environment. Theorist and psychologist, Lev Vygotsky (in Gauvain & Cole, 2008), embraced a social, cultural, and environmental view of child development. Vygotsky felt that “. . . children grow into the intellectual life around them” (p. 30). Thus, immersing children in meaningful books and literary experiences at an early age, in the home, and continuing this practice in schools and classrooms may be dependent on culture and socioeconomic status. They may also be dependent on the value attached to intellectual pursuits of acquiring knowledge and literacy. Vygotsky’s theory suggests that learning development is what a child could do without help or what could be accomplished with assistance. Using my lens as an American educator, how does this sociocultural theory transcend into the philosophical framework of other countries and what roles do picture books play in the child’s overall intellectual development?
I recently had the opportunity to be part of an educational cadre invited to visit the Loris Malaguzzi International Centre in Reggio Emilia, Italy. At the center, we learned of the pedagogical choices as well as the political, cultural, and ethical choices that created the foundations of the Reggio approach. My personal interest was to learn how young children in this approach satisfy their natural curiosities, process information, and interact with peers and adults. I was also interested in what role picture books play in their emerging literacy development and how this educational framework recognized the range of learners including those who may function above and beyond their age peers. Through the visits of three Reggio Infant Toddler and Preschools and six similar Pistoia, Italy schools, I was able to concretely observe teachers and students interacting, in a child-centered and focused environment. In this environment, there is evidence of meticulous arrangement and intentional design of materials (including books), child size space, and décor representative of the pride in student work, as well as the appreciation of nature and its beauty.
Foundations: Loris Malaguzzi
Reggio Emilia is located in Northern Italy between Para and Bologna, while Pistoia, also in the North, is in the Tuscany region. Both municipalities boast a system of educational experiences that cultivate family and community relationships. The triangulation of the school, family/cultural heritage, and community places the child at the center creating favorable conditions for learning and social emotional tranquility. This is depicted in Figure 1. Children’s natural curiosity is valued as they develop their connections to the world.
Depicts the child at the center of the educational structure of the Reggio approach.
There is a long history of child-centered, early childhood education in the Italian schools. One that is prominently known is the Reggio Emilia approach, named after its founding city and the work of its founding father, Loris Malaguzzi. His framework is studied and replicated in Italy and all over the world, much like we embrace the ideologies of Vygotsky, Piaget, Bruner, and Gardner. In her 2013 book, The Life and Times of Loris Malaguzzi, Smidt (2013) writes, “For Malaguzzi . . . learning does not move in a logical, sequenced fashion but through starts and stops, jumps, leaps and retreats” (p. 18) and “the journey of education is not to acquire a body of knowledge but rather to question, consider and challenge the boundary between the mundane . . . and often the trivial requirement of schooling” (p. 55). Thus, according to Malaguzzi, stringent and rigid curriculum is not in the best interest of the young child, especially for a young child who has the potential to think and perform above his or her age peers.
A philosophical aspect within the Reggio approach is the influence of the ways of knowing, discovering, and learning as described in The Hundred Languages of Children (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 2012). The title refers to a translated poem by Malaguzzi who declares that there are one hundred many ways for children to express understanding and learning. The focus of children birth to 6 years of age is to explore and express understanding through
thinking,
listening,
using their bodies,
exploring graphics,
and images they create based on what they see and experience.
This is accomplished through the use of a wide range of materials and books that simulate and bring their investigations to tangible ways of expression. Malaguzzi’s interests were thus founded in a “collection of schools that supported a child’s intellectual, emotional, social and moral potential . . . engrossing projects, carried out in a beautiful, healthy, love filled setting” (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 2012, p. 61).
Pedagogista and Atelierista
Using nature as one of its teaching tools, drawing, sculpting, painting, collage, light, movement, and oral communication become additional materials that guide young children to understand their world. Children are encouraged to explore their environment using the previously mentioned materials with support from teachers and the pedagogista or coordinator, who oversees the intellectual pursuits and thematic pedagogy. It is here that informational as well as picture books may be found on shelves, tables, and other areas of the school. They are there as a reference for the children, as well as for the teachers to engage the children with read-aloud story time.
The resident art instructor or atelierista is another important member of a school faculty. He or she provides numerous modeled ways a child may creatively represent and rerepresent their ideas, curiosities, and wonderings. The atelierista supports well-organized and colorized materials, many of which are recycled objects (bits of cloth, string, tubes, paper, wood, etc.) or articles of nature from around the school. Also of benefit to the children is a collection of drawing and painting implements of all types, color paper and tissue, as well as paint and pencils in a rainbow of colors. Figure 2 shows an example of the use of multiple types of materials to allow children to experience the qualities of shape, size, and physical attributes of objects for building and constructing.
Using blocks and recycled materials, children create environments for developing a sense of pattern, space, open and closed boundaries.
The teachers, in collaboration with the pedagogista and atelierista, are there to scaffold the experiences and observe the children’s discoveries, interactions with book, materials, and collaborative conversations and interactions with classmates. These young learning apprentices hypothesize, explore materials, question, observe, and engage in conversations with teachers and their fellow classmates. These activities are then carried on to home for continued thinking and clarification. It is their discoveries and curiosities that lead children to explore and eventually understand a core belief of the Reggio system. The young Italian children learn with each other, question one another, and often guide each other through collaboration and cooperation in a purposeful, productive, and thoughtful manner. Parents and grandparents support these methodologies as many of them have been through the Reggio approach themselves, a result of Malaguzzi intellectual legacy that dates back to post-World War II.
The Documentation Process
In the Reggio approach, teachers observe and document young children’s progress and curiosities to bridge and extend the students’ learning. They also note progression as children acquire new knowledge and reflect on the instruction and use of materials. These “documentations” of child learning are often prompted by the following questions that are representative of those posted in Loris Malaguzzi International Center:
Are the children’s drawing experiences accompanied by words? How are words and drawings interwoven?
Do the children talk about what they are doing while they are drawing or engaged in some type of activity? In what way? (Is the correspondence with words, mimicry, tone of voice gestures, etc.?)
How can we describe and create the words that emerge with the drawings or materials created by the child? (Are they descriptive, metaphorical, illusive, ironic, etc.?)
What materials and references did the child use to represent their thinking, knowledge transfer, and product of learning?
Through documentation, teachers record students’ inquiries and understandings of the constructs they are creating. The documentation process involves listening, annotating, and capturing pivotal moments in a child’s learning through anecdotal records, tape recording of conversations, or digitally. With the onset of technology, digital pictures and video may record the child’s progress in making connections to a given topic through their drawings, scribbles, or replication of a pattern, or picture in a book. Documentation serves as what we might call in American schools anecdotal records. They are not however to sift children into categoricals, but in fact to recognize the direction of the investigation or what alternative materials are needed to fulfill the children’s curiosity and wonder.
An example of this documentation is provided in Figure 3. These 4-year-old boys are drawing a representation of the patterns they created and constructed from objects of nature, including seed pods, dried flowers, branches, leaves, and so on. These were collected from the fields and landscapes around the school, home, and community. The pedagogista pointed out while children observed how the blowing wind created patterns of objects in a small space in the courtyard of their school. The atelierista then had the children gather materials to create a pattern of their own. In Figure 3, the important notable documentations are the observations of boys as they engage in active conversations as well as the drawings that transferred tactile patterns of the raw materials to representations on paper.
Children draw representations of their nature observations as well as use books to support their interpretations.
Because most observations are of groups of children, documentation may represent a collection of children’s ideas, drawings, and choice of media as well as interactions and body movements. It is at this point that the teachers may observe a student who has difficulty in the group and the teacher may redirect. Unlike our American educational structures, the formal identification of learning disabilities or gifted education does not prevail in the Reggio documentation process. Teachers differentiate through redirection of a task that will support their need for further time to develop or to accelerate. Likewise, formal pre/posttest and educational screening protocols, common in America, are not evident in the Reggio framework. The abilities of the teachers, pedagogista, and atelierista to differentiate for the students’ needs are evident through the adjustments to the learning events for all cognitive and affective abilities, including those that are progressing above their age peers. Many of the documentation process digital pictures taken of the children’s learning are widely displayed in the school as well as in the community. This documentation bridges the philosophy of the Reggio and Pistoia pedagogical philosophy. It allows for continual honing of teaching methods that address students’ differentiated learning needs. One area that remains vague in these municipal schools is how this documentation follows the child to their respective community schools where primary education continues.
Pistoia and Picture Books
While visiting one of the Pistoia preschools, we were made aware of a project that was in the development stage with an area hospital. The children of one of the area preschools were asked if they would like to help children who have to go to the hospital. The goal set by the hospital staff was to place lamps in the children’s rooms to cast a softer light than the bright overhead florescent light bulbs. In collaborative conversations with the preschool, the children were asked to design cheerful lamp shades depicting pictures that would provide a sense of calmness and happiness. Accepting the challenge, the school invited pediatric hospital staff members to speak to the children about the community project. The children examined a sample of one of the lamps. The hospital staff shared with them that they would be designing a lamp shade to cheer up the children. Pictures of the hospital rooms were provided for the children as well as picture books, both narrative and informational to serve as points of reference and investigation. Rich vocabulary was developed through conversations, and words both scientific (translucent) and domain specific (hospital) were discussed and clarified for the children as the need became necessary. Through the efforts of the atelierista, the children designed drawings and paintings on light boxes and overhead projectors to determine how their drawing would be viewed with light shining through, mimicking the translucency of the lamp shade. The lessons learned by the children were both cognitive, supporting intellectual pursuits, and affective, focusing on their social and emotional well-being. This example of the community embracing the child and supporting their sense of belonging was evident at this area preschool.
While in Pistoia, I noted a broad-based emphasis on picture books and storytelling. This is recognizable through the prominent displays of books in Pistoia Infant Toddler and Preschools. The storytelling emphasized in picture books was often utilized as stimulus for understanding literary genre structures: character, plot, and setting. The preschool children became aware of story characters with dress-up clothing, as well as the chairs and beds depicting the setting of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (see Figure 4). The stories told in school are encouraged to be retold at home, as this is described as an opportunity for parents and grandparents to encourage connectivity between the home and school.
Story book scenarios created by the collaboration between the community and extended families of Pistoia and area preschools.
Although Reggio Emelia’s inspiration is recognizable in Pistoia preschools, teachers have additional foundations in child development to build their individual identities. There is a community of respect for children where an intergenerational atmosphere prevails. Parents and grandparents are invited to bring their artisan skills to help create, for example, puppets that support stories or nursery rhymes that children have heard at school. They sew quilts for the children to wrap themselves in while listening to story. Books are thought of as objects of affection and pleasure. It would not be uncommon to see a puppet of a story animal or character on the hand of a child. Often, a grandmother of one of the children in the school makes the puppets (see Figure 5). The children often retell the story to a classmate, voice mimicking the teacher’s storytelling vernacular.
Puppets are created to support story interaction and are often created by intergenerational contributions.
Intellectual Pursuits
While there are many outstanding and admirable commonalities among the schools in Italy, one that particularly resonates is the admiration of the child’s intellectual ability. Acquiring knowledge of literacy skills is not accomplished through endless alphabet recitation, phonic workbooks, or worksheets. It is accomplished through inquiry, natural resources, recycled materials, books, and the wonderings of the child. This line of thinking is further discussed in the report, Lively Minds: Distinctions Between Academic Versus Intellectual Goals for Young Children (Katz, 2015). Katz describes two contexts of educational goals: academic and intellectual. Katz shares in her report two dispositions present in American preschools:
Academic goals, “. . . usually related to preliteracy skills in the early years, and practiced in drills, worksheets, and other kinds of exercise designed to prepare children for the next levels of literacy and numeracy and learning.”
Intellectual goals, however, “. . . address the life of the mind in its fullest sense (e.g. reasoning, predicting, analyzing, questioning, etc.), including a range of aesthetic and moral sensibilities” (Katz, 2015, p. 1).
It is the intellectual goals, as mentioned in the Katz report, that prevail in the Italian schools and are evidenced in play-based and project-based preschools in America.
The Role of the Picture Book in Intellectual Pursuits
Let us consider children’s intellectual pursuits through picture books. The spirit of the Reggio approach is not reading instruction but to learn from materials and books. Books act as mentor texts that provide opportunities to ponder and investigate. They provide opportunities for listening to the author’s words and the messages they send through expressive language. These books read by a teacher or parent develop their sense of investigation by providing a lens of the world through illustrator’s pictures or vivid photographic images.
An author/illustrator who was very visible on the bookshelves in the Italian schools was a well-known author to American children, Eric Carle. Crafter of a plethora of simple and colorful collage illustrations, his stories appeal to children. One of his first collaborations in children’s picture books was with Bill Martin, Jr. with the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear (Martin & Carle, 1967). This popular children’s book creates a predictable tale with large vivid illustrations. Each page of the book depicts a colorful animal such as a blue horse. The story then continues with a query of “What do you see?” prompting the children to interact with the text and pictures with the guidance of the teacher. Each page turn leads to bold illustrations and a colorful rendition of different animals. The simple repetitious text leads us to “Mother, mother what do you see, I see beautiful children looking at me.” The page turn brings us to the faces of diverse children; very progressive thinking for a picture book of this era. A discerning eye will recognize that the opening pages of the book, better known as the end papers, actually present an introduction to a table of contents that displays the order in which the animals are presented in the story. Limited in text, it is the pictures that carry the meaning. All children can enjoy this book with its subliminal introduction of colors. The story names the words attached to the colorful animals. Children may play a matching game with words and colors presented in the book. But what the book begs is to have the children “see” as well as to notice and note. Picture books should be visual extensions that transfer and carry the reader/child to other conceptual experiences. “What do you see?” as the Carle book chants, can be expanded to their own personal inquiry. This text was used as a means of asking the children to use their sense of sight to make observations. Through the storytelling, the children are able to make the story transfer from the book to other objects in the room. During our observations in the schools, our cadre of teachers was dependent on translators as the children only spoke Italian. The books read to the children were all in Italian, as many popular American authors have seen their work translated into multiple world languages. But it does not take a translator to see a gleeful face enjoying a story. One just needs to watch the nurturing interactions to recognize the impact.
A child’s inquiry begins with their curiosities and wonderings. Butterflies are very prevalent in Italy due to their lush gardens and are valued elements of beauty. To satisfy the children’s natural curiosity, hands-on exploration, interactions with nature, and plenty of materials and books provide an environment of exploration using many modalities of The Hundred Languages (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman 2012). Picture books, both informational and narrative, are rich with illustrations that often depict an artistic style that can be replicated by the children. Pervasive in all five of the schools visited was The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (1969). First published in 1969, this book has sold millions of copies and has been translated in 62 languages. During one of my school visits, I observed a teacher with children huddled around her and in her lap as she took the children through the story and illustrations of this engaging picture book. The children hung on to every turn of the page as she shared lively and brilliant colored illustrations depicting the metamorphosis of a butterfly. It was this book along with many other Eric Carle books that were prominently displayed in both the Reggio and Pistoia preschools. Carle’s child-like depiction of nature, habitats of earthly creatures, and stories of each animal’s place in their natural world resonate with the philosophy of these schools and the popularity they have among children. The story of metamorphosis is portrayed in his signature, colorful tissue paper, and paint collages. The illustrations share with us the story of a caterpillar eating its way through tasty treats. It is not the words, as much as the lively pictures, that allow us to witness the transformation of a caterpillar into a huge and colorful butterfly. The book also boasts special placement of the pages that become larger as the caterpillar eats through one apple, two pears, three plums, and so on. As the number of fruits depicted becomes larger, so does the width of the page in which each grouping of fruits is displayed. This leads to an awareness of numeration, repetitive language, and time passage. Healthy food choice issues also come into the picture as the caterpillar eats through many other items such as a pie, a lollypop, and an ice cream cone. But alas, he feels better after a good munch on a green leaf. The joy of the story, the appeal of the color illustrations, and the physicality of the text itself take us on a journey through the life cycle of a caterpillar. The last page of the book provides a double-page spread of the caterpillar morphed into a beautiful butterfly. This picture book experience provides a springboard of exploration for children while it also fulfills subliminal elements of language and literacy through storytelling, using this book as a mentor text. Discussions with the children ensued, allowing them to ponder and support their growing curiosities, and compare what they had learned from their current nature study. It also helped the teacher develop visual thinking strategies (VTS) with the children to develop metacognitive processes.
Visualizing, Questioning in Picture Books
Visual literacy is a term often associated with the interpretation of visual stimuli. Comprehending what we see in pictures and illustrations expands our understanding and supports meaning making. A strategy that provides aesthetic understanding as well as promoting critical and creative thinking is a method developed through the New York City Museum of Modern Art, and director of education museum, Philip Yenawine. Visual Thinking Strategies, Using Art to Deepen Learning Across School Disciplines (Yenawine, 2014) utilizes fine art and illustrations as a medium of critical and creative thinking. VTS provides a structure for visual examination and asks children not just what is depicted in the painting or illustration but what message the content may be convey to them in terms of its meaning. There are three simple questions that are asked of the children that propel the VTS stimuli. They are as follows:
What is going on in this picture?
What do you see that makes you say that?
What more can we find out? (Yenawine, 2014)
Using this sequence of questioning, the children will individually respond and revisit the picture while the teacher points to the images they describe, paraphrases while remaining neutral, and links their responses thus creating a continuance of thought and visual story telling. Through this procedural sequence of questioning and responding, we place the child as the consumer of thought provoking art and illustration. Inevitably, the child becomes the producer of thoughtful observation, conjecture, and extended curiosity. These meaning-making conversations add to our observations of child learning, support their wonderings, while also dispelling misconceptions by having them revisit their thinking, and, perhaps continue their wonderings. Although VTS is not technically part of the Italian pedagogy, it was highly recognizable in the manner the Italian teachers posed questions and listened to the children’s conjectures about what they were observing. This leads to prolific documentation of the children’s interactions with each other’s interpretations of the visual stimuli as well as their newfound knowledge and transfer of ideas.
These additional books by Eric Carle promote critical and creative thinking that may lead to intellectual growth. The Tiny Seed (Carle, 1987) is a book about the life cycle of a flower. The tall physicality of the book, its simple text, and vivid, colorful, collage illustrations develop into a nature story that can be shared by an adult, and then revisited over and over by the child to verify their reasoning or predictions in their thinking. A subliminal tale of predator/prey is depicted in the story of friendship: Do You Want to Be My Friend? (Carle & Hyman, 1971). This book shares the value of friendship that comes in animals of all shapes and sizes. An additional Carle book worth mentioning is the imaginative book, The Mixed-Up Chameleon (Carle, 1984). Children can reflect how they perceive themselves in the world and how being who you are is a special gift to have and to hold.
The beauty of nature and the living things in the world are critical attributes of Carle’s books. It is not just in the physicality of the books, the text, or the illustrations but it is also in the story and the words that enrich, extend, and build relationships, regardless of the language in which it is presented. It was through interactions with text that the preschool children began to see the need for letters to share their thoughts on paper. Eric Carle visited the Pistoia Municipal Preschools in 2001, and the legacy of his books and what they offer to the children prevail.
An Italian author of note is Leo Lionni. Although not originally from Italy, his picture book career evolved while living in Northern Italy. His simplistic and colorful illustrative style brands his books like those of Eric Carle, a style easy for young children to replicate and to tell their own stories. The following table shares how Eric Carle and Leo Lionni books might be utilized in a classroom setting in America or abroad. Table 1 identifies the Mentor Texts along with the categories of Overarching Themes, Artistic Style, a possible Inquiry Question as well as a Text Structure for each of the six books. It can be noted that a compare and contrast discussion can take place between Carle’s (1984) The Mixed-Up Chameleon and Lionni’s A Color of His Own (1976).
Using Picture Books in the Classroom
Cognitive and Affective Purposes of Viewing the Picture Book
The special meaning and more particularly, the submerged association that words and images have for the individual reader will largely determine what the work communicates to him. The reader brings to the work personality traits, memories of past events, present needs and preoccupations, a particular mood of the moment and a particular physical condition. These and many other elements in a never to be duplicated combination determine their response to a peculiar contribution of the text. (Rosenblatt, 1938, pp. 30-31)
In picture books, we learn of the characters, their inherent traits, and representation of their actions through illustrations and visual literacy. Further emphasis depicts how these attributes affect the behavioral or social and emotional qualities that may parallel student life. What is the reader’s purpose when reading and viewing picture books? In her 2005 text, Making Meaning With Texts, Rosenblatt discusses the transactional theory of reading and writing. She points out that reading is an interaction between the reader and the text, and that each transaction provides an encounter (Rosenblatt, 2005). The reader and text act and interact with each other. This theory is carried out through two stances: the efferent, “. . . the reader’s attention is primarily focused on what will remain as a residue after the reading—the information to be acquired, the logical solution to a problem, the actions to be carried out.” Aesthetic, however, “ . . . the reader’s attention is centered directly on what is being lived through during the relationship with that particular text” (Rosenblatt, 1978, pp. 23, 25). The Caldecott Honor book, Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems (Sidman & Prange, 2005), blends both of these stances. The efferent stance, often an expository type of reading, informs as well as provides a determinate factor as to what reader will focus on when the reading event is complete. These are the cognitive factors. The aesthetic stance is viewed in terms of story, drama, or poem. Feelings, images, and changing moods are delivered or evoked by these genres. They provide what will remain with the reader as a result of the interpretation during, as well as after, the reading event. These may be considered affective factors. The Song of the Water Boatman’s (Sidman & Prange, 2005) pairing of poems and informational text provide expository descriptions. The child has the opportunity to shift between both stances, reflecting on the factual as well as on feelings. Triangulate the (a) transactual theory with (b) noteworthy illustrations as well as the (c) residue or what is maintained after reading, and the child is provided with multiple ways of reflection on what is read and well as viewed. Rosenblatt’s transactional theory resonates with the philosophical foundations in Italian schools.
Final Thoughts
The next time I venture to Italy, it might be to seek out the ultimate leather purse or pair of shoes, but my trip would not be complete without a visit to Reggio Emilia or Pistoia preschools. I would continue with my observations of young children, nurtured in their intellectual pursuits with picture books, investigations of nature, and the use of simple materials. I would bring a suitcase filled with other books to share by American author Lois Ehlert. This Caldecott Award-winning author appeals to children with simple collage and montage illustrations similar to those of Carle and Lionni. Using readily available materials, Ehlert’s books beg for replication as well as to expanded thinking and transference into other and life events that children experience. Fulfilling the organic and constructivist philosophy of The Hundred Languages, Ehlert’s (2014) The Scraps Book, Notes From a Colorful Life takes children through the author’s personal memoir of how she began her work by sharing how she evolved as an illustrator looking at the simple things of nature and using scraps to create her illustrations. As a precursor to this book, children may enjoy Ehlert’s Hands, Growing up to be an Artist (2004) as a read aloud during storytelling time. These two books as mentor texts provide and build the intellectual goals and pursuits of child development by supporting children’s creativity and the notion of following their dreams. These are similar to ideas portrayed in Carle’s and Lionni’s books. Ehlert’s books support children’s exploration and possible depiction and replication of their natural investigations. Additional and noteworthy picture books by Ehlert that follow this creative and replicable continuum for young audiences include the following:
Growing Vegetable Soup (Ehlert, 1987), through the use of color paper cuts, a father and child enjoy the process of planting seeds and watching the vegetables grow together.
Color Zoo (Ehlert, 1989), this Caldecott Medal-winning book shows how using simple shapes of colored paper, different animals can be created. This is a perfect springboard for noting progression and regression by adding and subtracting shapes to create new animals.
Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf (Ehlert, 1991), this outstanding example of collage, using actual pieces of nature, is blended with water colors to share with viewers the life of a tree.
Leaf Man (Ehlert, 2005), in this book that celebrates the use of real leaves, the story is told through the lens of Leaf Man, who goes wherever the wind may take him.
Children require a friendly and cooperative environment with time to explore their curiosities and interests. Their hands-on inquiry and investigations can be complemented by providing a plentiful supply of books that simulate their intellectual pondering, and thus adding to the resources a child use to continue their quest and explorations of the world in which they live.
Footnotes
Conflict of Interest
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Bio
Laura Beltchenko is a 34-year veteran educator. Her career in public education includes classroom teacher, reading specialist, teacher, and coordinator of gifted education programs as well as an associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction. She is the current Chair of the Early Childhood Network of the National Association for Gifted Children as well as the Chair for the Gifted Education Advisory Council for the Illinois State Board of Education. She is an adjunct faculty member in the Reading and Language Arts Department of National Louis University in Illinois as well as a National Louis University Friend for the Center for Teaching Through Children’s Books. She has a master’s degree in Reading Education, a degree in educational leadership and began her doctoral studies in Reading and Language Arts. Her study of children’s literature finds her developing thoughtful in-service for educators with the intent of addressing the needs of young and diverse learners. She has a strong background in staff development and is a state and national speaker on the topics of literacy development, and children’s picture books.