{"id":15434,"date":"2017-04-12T00:01:56","date_gmt":"2017-04-12T04:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=15434"},"modified":"2017-04-11T23:09:52","modified_gmt":"2017-04-12T03:09:52","slug":"state-employee-rediscovers-love-childrens-picture-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/state-employee-rediscovers-love-childrens-picture-books\/","title":{"rendered":"State Employee Rediscovers Love of Children’s Picture Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the early 1990\u2019s I happily accompanied my mom on trips to the public library to switch out her brightly colored milk crates full of books for ones that paralleled her newest first grade teaching unit. I lunched in King\u00a0Bidgood\u2019s\u00a0bathtub, clung to the smooth scales of Rainbow Fish<\/em>, and assisted the Jolly Postman in delivering his letters. Two decades later, I\u2019m working in state government and only look at picture books every few months when I visit my two-year-old nephew in Indianapolis. I lost much of my appreciation for a beautifully written and illustrated children\u2019s book, and like much of the public, had come to believe that these picture books were simple books intended for children exclusively.<\/p>\n

A year ago, I started working on my MLIS and am now just a few courses away from earning my degree.\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0imagined myself working at the Ohio Supreme Court Law Library or another information-related government gig. On a whim, I decided to take a children\u2019s literature course, which has quickly become one of my favorites. My living room contains stacks of children\u2019s books from my local library sitting by my fireplace, and again I am devouring these books as I did when I was in elementary school.<\/p>\n

One aspect of my current job involves collaborating with the Ohio Arts Council on putting together an exhibition of outstanding Ohio high school student\u2019s artwork. This project had me thinking about the books piled in my living room and especially the artwork that helps tell each story.\u00a0 I came to the realization that children\u2019s books really are like mobile art galleries with detailed\u00a0curation.<\/strong> Each book has illustrations that can be interpreted in many different ways and seen through a variety of lenses.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the\u00a0curation\u00a0takes place though the text complimenting the work, like Jon\u00a0Klassen\u2019s\u00a0books that make me giggle at the seemingly simply storyline and delightfully minimal illustrations. Other times the\u00a0curation\u00a0can take place through the reader\u2019s own perceptions when reading a book without words, like David\u00a0Weisner\u2019s\u00a0Flotsam<\/em>. My nostalgia comes flooding back when I take in works like\u00a0King\u00a0Bidgood\u2019s\u00a0in the Bathtub\u00a0<\/em>by Audrey and Don Wood, and I find myself transported back to digging through my mom\u2019s crates and handing the book to my older sister to read to me in her floor to ceiling pink ruffled bedroom.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to go to a museum or visit a specific exhibition to fully enjoy the art that exists in a children\u2019s picture book. These masterpieces were intended to be taken in while held in the hands of children and adults alike. These mobile galleries can be thrown into a purse, backpack, or briefcase and enjoyed wherever you happen to be.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m grateful I decided to take Dr. Marianne Martens\u2019 \u201cArt and Story: The Study of Children\u2019s\u00a0Picturebooks\u201d course and will never again consider children\u2019s picture books to be simple books, intended just for children.<\/p>\n

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Today’s guest post was written by Cora Slack. Cora is an MLIS student at the Kent State School of Library and Information Science<\/a>. She can be reached at cslaack@kent.edu<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Please note that as a guest post, the views expressed here do not represent the official position of ALA or ALSC.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you\u2019d like to write a guest post for the ALSC Blog, please contact Mary Voors, ALSC Blog manager, at\u00a0alscblog@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learn how one MLIS student will never again consider children\u2019s picture books to be simple books, intended just for children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[22,134],"tags":[691],"class_list":["post-15434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childrens-literature","category-guest-blogger","tag-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}