Reading Stories in Pictures with Children’s Picture Books

Abstract

This study attempts to introduce the concept of visual text reading in Korean children’s picture book reading. It contemplates ways to implement analytic ‘picture reading’ in English classrooms with the purpose of Korean children’s literary and literacy development and incidental English learning. For the purpose the study first reviews research on the role of pictures in picture book narratives, and discusses principles and codes involved in analytic interpretation of the pictures. And to see the possibility of analytic picture reading in primary classrooms, the study reviews classroom studies experimenting on child readers’ ability to conduct pictorial analysis in literary groups. Then, to present a model picture reading classwork, picture analyses are done with two sample picture books, The Tiger Who Came to Tea (Kerr) and Clarice Bean, That’s Me (Child). Based on the analyses, sample discussion points for picture reading activities with the two books are created for Korean children’s English classrooms where such picture books can be read. Finally, possible issues for the implementation in Korean settings are discussed.