The Art of Reading a Picture Book

REBECCA SCHULTZ: Apparently, picture book sales are down as parents are pushing chapter books on preschool-age children:

Publishers cite pressures from parents who are mindful of increasingly rigorous standardized testing in schools. “Parents are saying, ‘My kid doesn’t need books with pictures anymore,’” said Justin Chanda, the publisher of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

This is sad for several reasons.

First, means-to-an-end education is always sad. If picture books are a mere stepping-stone – a road to chapter books and a way to learn how to read – then the delight that children take in them becomes secondary and skippable. After chapter books, presumably, comes something else, and the possibility of reading as an end in itself is continually postponed. Education becomes an uphill battle, whose final reward is abstract, untenable, and probably doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, “Goodnight moon, Goodnight cow jumping over the moon, Goodnight light, and the red balloon” loses its poetry.

Second, picture books are just better than children’s chapter books anyhow.