On Reading Picture Books With Teens

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I love picture books. My library career, before moving to Wheeler School, started and spanned ten years in public libraries reading picture books to youth from birth through new adulthood. My personal reading life regularly includes a stack of new and favorite picture books. Family read alouds with my cat (who stares intently at every page) and my puppy (a therapy dog in training with many storytimes in her future) are frequent occasions in my house.


It follows, then, that I believe that picture books are wonderful, useful, and beneficial for humans (and animals) of all ages. So, of course, I don’t just read them at home. I have used picture books and storytimes as a tool for working with teens and high school students for many years. In my own experience, storytimes and read alouds for teens look something like this: first, upon announcing the storytime, the mood in the room softens. The storytime, the picture book performance, even if it seems silly at first, is a welcome break and fun addition to school day expectations. As the story unfolds, the audience decompresses. Suddenly, I find myself in a room full of engaged students. In the world of picture books, where anything can happen, we are embracing spontaneity and imagination. The stories generate a palpable hum of attention and thinking as students one by one settle into the experience.

    The flexible, multimodal format of the picture book encourages creativity and imagination. It also appeals to a variety of learning styles. 

 

Anecdotes aside, there is a significant amount of existing literature on the benefits of reading and of reading picture books that you can use to create your own storytimes for teens and older students. As Lower School Librarian Charlene Williams wrote in her November 2020 post, Celebrating Picture Books, “Picture books become the center of content delivery, build perspective, give students a window into someone else's experience or a mirror in which they see themselves and their experiences reflected.” And this applies to high school students too. Picture books and storytimes are an opportunity to encourage free, fun reading for high school students. The flexible, multimodal format of the picture book encourages creativity and imagination. It also appeals to a variety of learning styles. To put an idea into a picture book means to distill it to its essence, making picture books highly accessible to learners of all types. And as a five to ten-minute adventure, it’s easy to fit and even incorporate as a spark of thought or rest into an assembly here, an elective there, or a larger block of the curriculum.

  The display has been a great opportunity to chat with students as they explore new books and reminisce about old favorites

This November, in honor of Picture Book Month, I made a display in the Upper School Library and posted a flyer with some facts about the benefits of reading picture books. I also read a picture book to the Upper School on multiple occasions during morning assembly. The display has been a great opportunity to chat with students as they explore new books and reminisce about old favorites, and several teachers have come up to me to discuss the books read during assembly and their students' responses. One science teacher shared a picture book with me that she reads to her classes each year on the first day of school. Another shared about the reactions of her senior students. Another said it was a very centering way to start the day.
To put an idea into a picture book means to distill it to its essence, making picture books highly accessible to learners of all types.





Reading out loud to a group is an act of community and reciprocity. And so, whether the group settles right in or you have to actively engage them, it’s an opportunity to connect, to communicate, and to buy in together. I’m a firm believer in using picture books to build shared experiences and stories, and, for just a few minutes, pause all the other things we have going on and step into a book together. I highly encourage you to give it a try with the teens and older students in your life.


Here are the books that I included in this year’s display:


A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead

The ABCs of Black History by Rio Cortez (Author), Lauren Semmer (Illustrator)

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst (Author), Ray Cruz (Illustrator)

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson (Author), Peter Parnell (Author), Henry Cole (Illustrator)

The Bad Seed by Jory John (Author), Pete Oswald (Illustrator)

Bodies Are Cool by Tyler Feder

The Book of Mistakes by Corinna Luyken

The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt (Author), Oliver Jeffers (Illustrator)

The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson

Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry (Author), Vashti Harrison (Illustrator)

I Am Every Good Thing by Derrick Barnes & Gordon C. James

Julián Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love

Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña (Author), Christian Robinson (Illustrator)

Princess Puffybottom...and Darryl by Susin Nielsen (Author), Olivia Chin Mueller (Illustrator)

Swimmy by Leo Lionni

There is a Bird on Your Head! by Mo Willems

They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel 

We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom (Author), Michaela Goade (Illustrator)

What Do You Do With an Idea? by Kobi Yamada (Author), Mae Besom (Illustrator)

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak


Additional reading: 


Paul, P. (2021, Feb 20). Your kids aren’t too old for picture books, and neither are you. 

The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/opinion/sunday/picture-books-reading.html


The Reading Agency (2015). Literature review: The impact of reading for pleasure and empowerment. Retrieved from https://readingagency.org.uk/resources/2277/


Takahashi, D. (2018). Picture books are for teens too!. Retrieved from 

http://yalsa.ala.org/blog/2018/11/25/picture-books-are-for-teens-too/


Taylor, D. & Weinberg, K. (2021). Picture books are a powerful tool for teen readers. 

Retrieved from https://www.adlit.org/topics/background-knowledge/picture-books-are-powerful-tool-teen-readers


Vandeyar, N. M. (2019). Nonfiction picture books: They’re not just for kids!. Retrieved 

from https://perspectivesonreading.com/nonfiction-picture-books-theyre-not-just-for-kids/