Children Reading Pictures: New Contexts and Approaches to Picturebooks offers up-to-date research evidence on the responses of the primary audience for picturebooks – children. The new edition has retained the best of the original while expanding its scope in several directions, including the role of the art museum in helping children and their teachers to broaden and deepen their appreciation of the visual, and the significance of understanding diversity and inclusion while looking at illustrations in picturebooks, in digital form and in the art museum. In particular, the third edition:

uses new case studies to bring to life exciting initiatives from teachers and art museum educators in the UK and beyond, examining the potential of picturebooks for overcoming cultural, educational, linguistic and other barriers in the classroom and in other settings
continues to draw readers’ attention to significant international theoretical work in the field and provides structured advice for teachers and graduate students who wish to carry out their own research
focuses on new research with pupils, teachers, art educators and researchers working on young people’s responses to a variety of visual texts, including digital forms and fine art, and through children’s own artistic creations, to develop a more nuanced understanding of visual literacy
celebrates the glorious variety of outstanding picturebooks and their makers who offer rich challenge, amusement, pleasure and consolation to young readers in a changing, often troubling world

Children Reading Pictures is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of education, art and children’s literature, as well as providing important information for primary and early years teachers, literacy coordinators and for all those interested in picturebooks and visual literacy.

Morag Styles