You must select three of the following activities, each of which you should complete for a different picture book.  You may turn components of this assignment in at any time, but all three must be completed by Friday, July 28.  Your report for each activity should be approximately 1½-2½ pages.

1. Ellen Handler Spitz, in a recent book (Inside Picture Books, Yale UP, 1999), says,

“ . . . children respond to books from their own perspective and through the lens of what they understand.  At different stages of growth and in the wake of specific events, new agendas or altered patterns of response to a well-loved picture book may develop.” (19)
Find a copy of a picture book that you remember enjoying in your childhood.  Re-read the book, noting your response to the book as a young adult.  Compare that response to your recollection of the book from your childhood; what changes have occurred in the way you see the book?  What “specific events, new agendas, or altered patterns of response” do you see as affecting your changed perception?  Be as specific and detailed as possible in your response to this prompt; i.e., don’t simply say, “I reacted differently because now I am grown up.”

1. Make a close analysis of a single illustration from a distinguished picture book. (You may want to discuss your choice with me before doing too much analysis.) Make several black and white photocopies to use as you work on the project and one to turn in with the finished analysis. Study the illustration you have chosen carefully, both as a whole and in its elements. Explain why you chose the illustration and which specific elements you find worth analysis, and create possible questions and alternative answers (more than one, please) for your chosen illustration. You can see examples of this assignment in a finished state at Kay Vandergrift’s Visual Interpretive Analysis page.

1. Look at several (at least 3, and no more than 6) picture books drawn from the same original source (fairy tale, beast fable, tall tale, etc.).  Analyze how different choices for illustration might affect a child’s response to the story.  Include discussion of which scenes are illustrated and why, the effect of an artist’s style and choice of medium, the nature of the images used, and how culture and changing times have affected illustrative choices.

1. Choose a picture book that you think would be interesting to a child of your acquaintance (your own child, a younger brother or sister, a friend or neighbor’s child, a child you care for in a day care or as a baby sitter).  Arrange a special time to read the book together with the child, then interview the child about his/her experience of the book.  Ask specific questions: What kind of emotional response did the child have to a specific picture? What did the child think was most unusual about the book?  What details does the child notice about specific pictures? Etc. Compare the child’s responses to your own: how are they different?  How are they alike?  What surprises you about this comparison?

1. Select a non-fiction picture book (e.g., one that is intended to convey information rather than to tell a story) that deals either with a topic with which you are very familiar (something from your academic field, a hobby you have pursued, a place you have been, etc.).  Analyze how the pictures and the text work together to explain the topic.  What do the pictures add to the reader’s understanding?  What does the text add?  Are there certain types of information that are better conveyed through text? Through pictures?  Why?

1. Write a lesson plan for a picture book to be used in an elementary classroom (K-3 – you may decide what grade level you will do the plan for).  The lesson plan should include at least three separate activities for the children (besides simply reading the book), along with the educational goal of these activities.  You can see samples of lesson plans at this website: SCORE Cyberguides.  Here is another website with several lesson plans for Where the Wild Things Are; you can use this as a model as well, but I would like your plans to be somewhat more detailed than the ones on this page.

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