- [David] Hello, readers.
Let's talk about illustrations.
When you're reading a story
and it has pictures in
it, don't skip them.
You could be missing out
on a wealth of information
and added detail.
Good readers use pictures
to help them understand
stories even better.
And let's talk about why that is.
Pictures can help describe
the mood of a story
or how a story makes you feel.
If I'm telling a story
about a girl and her dad
going for a walk in the woods,
but then when you see
an image of those woods
and the trees are all spindly and black
and the sky is a leaden gray,
what does that tell you
about the mood of the story?
It's grim, it's creepy,
it's a scary walk in some scary woods.
The way the story feels can be expressed
through the illustrations.
Pictures can help describe
the events of a story.
Maybe the story's a little
unspecific, say, for instance,
we're talking about
Little Red Riding Hood,
and it says, "The big bad
wolf swallows Granny up
"and disguises himself as her."
But it doesn't go into further detail.
Well, what does that mean?
What does his disguise look like?
And we can look at an
illustration like this and say:
Okay, that big bulge in the wolf's stomach
is where Granny is,
and the wolf's got on Granny's bonnet
and little glasses and all.
So that's his disguise.
It is not very convincing to me,
but what do I know?
And pictures can help
fill in important details.
I can look at a character's
expression as I'm reading
to help me answer questions I might have
about how that character feels.
What's going on there
with the face of the wolf?
Is that a smile, is that a grimace?
The text can give me a clue,
but then the picture can tell
me the rest of the story.
We can use our knowledge
of how real life people are or behave
to help understand pictures in a story.
The wolf, for example,
the face he's making
with his eyes narrowed and
his brows knit like that
and that smile creeping
across his features,
to me, that's a scheming face.
That's the face someone makes
when they're talking to themselves
and planning something nasty.
He's also putting on
Granny's bonnet and glasses.
We know these aren't things
wolves are known to wear.
And he seems very pleased with himself.
So he's eaten Granny, he's
putting on her clothes.
He seems really happy about
it, but in an evil way,
and we can use that to inform
the way we read the story.
This wolf isn't satisfied
with eating an old woman.
He wants to eat her grandkid for dessert.
So greedy, what a greedy,
mean little beast!
The point is that pictures
in stories are really useful.
Read them the same way you read words.
Understanding images will
make you a stronger reader,
and if you can learn that,
why then, you can learn
anything, David out.
