At the ringing of the bell, students are corralled from their desks and asked to join their teacher at the front of the room. A captivating selection of children’s picturebooks housed in the woven book basket located at the front of the room excites the community of readers. 

Sitting on the colorful classroom carpet, legs crisscrossing and awe in their eyes, the last gentle kinesthetic reminder and sound of shh gives way to stark silence. The young students gaze intently at the children’s picturebook their teacher is displaying at the front of the room and the lingering anticipation invokes curiosity.

Children's picturebooks share the tales, narratives, and experiences of friends, families, and familiar places. They feature various genres and themes that invite exploration, wonder, and the circumspect to solve complex, challenging problems. Children's picturebooks unlock both fictional settings and informational ecosystems and habitats. 

When quality children’s picturebooks—like those selected from the Newbery Award, the Caldecott Medal, or ILA’s Children’s Book Awards List—are coupled with powerful literacy practices such as think-turn-talk, asking questions, and written a-ha moments on sticky notes, we can capture inquisitiveness and shoulder-to-shoulder student conversations and use that to weave an awe-inspiring learning environment. 

During the instructional literacy block, teachers have the opportunity to deliver small group instruction with an independent reading center featuring self-selected children’s picturebooks to build an interconnected reading community that honors courage, kindness, and empathy as the goals of literacy. The magical moments that are captured and presented within the pages of children’s picturebooks can spring from honorable guest readers, brought to life by digital recordings of celebrities performing readings, whisper-read in the literacy station, or vocalized as a dramatic teacher read aloud.

In today’s classroom, the most frequently read children’s picturebooks are approximately 25 years old. Circulating contemporary conversations capture that children’s picturebooks have a crowd, a crown, and the complex, complicated need for a champion.

Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors

Children’s picturebooks can craft a world of self-reflection, help readers develop empathy, and provide the foundation for project-based learning. Book Fairs, Book Swaps, and Book Talks can build bridges and invite open conversations to create compassionate classrooms and communities. Between the covers can lie stories and tales reflecting friends and adventure set in a world readers will find familiar or a chronological text that takes one into a new world can all be discovered by the sharing of children’s picturebooks. Animals, tall-tales, friends, and recipes all dwell inside the pages of children’s picturebooks and informational topics spanning space, plants, or spiders all peacefully cohabitate in the classroom library.

Ready, set, read

There’s no bad time to enjoy a picturebook. An after recess read-aloud can provide the perfect time to showcase the magic and splendor of children’s picturebooks. Book clubs and reading circles present a scheduled time for students to gather in nested learning communities to explore common themes on related topics. Book Buddies offer the opportunity for younger readers to have self-selected children’s picturebooks read to them by a fluent reading mentor or guide. Ebooks and iPads provide an audio narration of children’s picturebooks allotting students’ time for independent listening along with guided practice and rehearsal. 

When books are read, discussed, shared, displayed, and made available for checkout to support at-home literacy, blooming readers are presented with the opportunity to embrace reading, meaning, and the full discovery of literacy.

Curriculum connections 

Children’s picturebooks set the stage for expanded learning opportunities. Children’s picturebooks can be paired with upcoming field trips and serve as learning guides or resources to prepare students for their upcoming adventure to the local zoo or regional museum. Also, children’s picturebooks can be incorporated into social studies content and STEM topics, and can marvelously merge with math instruction. Science projects, graphic organizers, and historical timelines can be completed with the content of children’s picturebooks. 

In addition to providing a bevy of words, children’s picturebooks provide young learners with the tools to explore, understand, and help solve community problems, such as the need for food drives to address food insecurity and book drives to stock local family shelters with donated books so that all children might experience the joy of reading.

The sharing of children’s picturebooks could be followed by students writing a group, paired, or class review of the book or even the invitation of a local speaker to further address the topic or theme of the children’s picturebook in person or via technology. Librarians at local libraries can  recommend additional titles that students might enjoy available for check-out or inter-library loan for the classroom library.

The world of literacy as captured in children’s picturebooks is an ever-bountiful harvest that gives, restores, and grows. May our children find their faces, their classmates, new neighbors, far-away places, and amazing adventures in the pages of children’s picture books.

The read-aloud book basket

• Friendship/Classmates: The Day the Crayons Made Friends by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers (Penguin Young Readers Group)
• Words/Vocabulary: The Dictionary Story by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston (Candlewick Press)
• Science/Trees: Listen to the Language of Trees: A Story of How Forests Communicate Underground by Tera Kelley (Sourcebooks)
• Animals/Spiders: Jumper by Jessica Lanan (Roaring Brook Press)
• Family/Acceptance: Eyes That Kiss in the Corner by Joanna Ho (HarperCollins)
• Food Insecurity/SEL: Saturday at the Food Pantry by Diane O’Neill (Whitman, Albert & Company)
• Grief/Empathy: Cape by Kevin Johnson (Roaring Brook Press)
• Books/Library: Stacey’s Remarkable Books by Stacey Abrams (Harper Collins)
• PE/Recess: Ella McKeen, Kickball Queen by Beth Mills (Lerner Publishing Group)
• Social Studies/History: Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard and Juana Martinez-Neal (Roaring Brook Press)

Learn More

Centering Bilingual Books in Every Literacy Classroom

Literacy Today magazine: Reflecting Every Reader