Writers on reading: a montage

I opened up our discussion from our last couple of posts to a listserv for Utah-based writers and illustrators. With permission I reprint some of their comments.

Kristyn Crow:
My theory is that there are no books without pictures. Some books have pictures an illustrator creates, and other books have pictures we create in our minds. Picture books and graphic novels give us images that our minds might never conjure up on their own. The more fantastic images we store in our brains, the better we'll be at imagining them on our own.

Laura Card:
Not only does everyone learn differently, but that neuroscientists have proven that using multiple stimuli (visual, verbal, kinesthetic, sensory) cements memory and makes lovely wrinkly brains. I believe that if you get children turned on to reading, they will often seek out more advanced and more satisfying material as they grow.

Sydney Hussemen:
I never really understood the importance of wordless picture books until I had my second daughter. She LOVED wordless books because she could read them to us--and no one could say that she was doing it
wrong (she felt quite self-conscious about being the only non-reader in the family). She's now in 3rd grade and reads incredibly well, but she's such a visual person (draws all the time) that I still buy her
picture books. Those are the books she spends the most time with--and, heck, the vocabulary in picture books is often more advanced than in chapter books (and some of those are so boring and predictable!)

Brandon Mull:
"What is the use of a book, thought Alice, without pictures or conversations?"

Will Terry:
This is an issue that hits very close to my heart. I was one of those kids who was in danger of being left behind. If A.D.D. had been invented in the early 70's I would have been diagnosed with it. I refused to read the books that I was assigned to read. I was in the remedial classes through high school. I avoided reading as much as possible and as a result got poor grades. I think the phrase I heard most from most of my teachers was "stop daydreaming". My Father was working on his PHD and was Phi Beta Kapa. My older sister got straight A's and later went on to become Phi Beta Kapa and my mother had her master's degree. I felt like I didn't belong and my parents were puzzled so they had me tested to see if I was lazy or just stupid (they never shared the results). I felt stupid and out of place - I couldn't focus on the things that I was supposed to be learning .

However, I got mostly A's in art and music. I looked forward to going to art class like some kids look forward to going Disneyland. I was first chair cellist at my high school and I worked my way up to first
chair in my county orchestra just outside Washington D.C. I earned my eagle scout award and would do anything to spend time in the wilderness or building things.

I found recreational reading on my own through books that had pictures. I checked out Picture books when I was in grade school, National Geographic as a teenager (and yes it's obvious why a teenage boy would like N.G. but beyond that the photographs have an amazing editorial content) which compelled me to read to find out what the pictures were about. Towards the end of high school my english teacher introduced me to Steinbeck and I realized I like to read about people enduring great struggles.

I clawed my way into BYU and excelled in Illustration even though I still suffered in my general ed classes. I went on to develop my interests in illustration and have now been working full time as a freelance illustrator for 17 years. I've illustrated over 1000 images for national magazines - 100's of advertising images many for fortune 500 companies - and have illustrated 20 children's books.

I've come to realize that there are many forms of intelligence and multiple learning styles. The public school system teaches in an auditory style largely ignoring kinesthetic and visual learners (which I've discovered I am). It was built after the model of the university which was formed to meet the demands of a changing world. The industrial age created a need for clerical workers and math and english were at the top of the list. The arts were largely forgotten.

Can you really say that because someone can write a grammatically correct well written comparison paper that they are smarter than someone who can play or write a beautiful concerto on the piano or
paint a beautiful landscape? We hold some of the worlds brightest artists like Leonardo Da Vinci and Mozart with the same reverence as we do Steve Jobs and Larry Page and rightly so – they are all creatives. How then could one say that reading one subject or genre is more important than another? Life is a journey and if we eliminate the parts we think won't serve our kids we might just be taking away the very things they need to help develop their interests.

We can't all be doctors, lawyers, accountants, or programmers. I owe much of my success to my parents who encouraged me to follow my passions. I was a "pleaser" as a kid and if they had spoken negatively of my artistic aspirations I wouldn't be where I am today. There's nothing quite like figuring out who you are and following your dreams.

I think parents should let kids read whatever they want fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels, picturbooks, comics - after all the fact that they are reading something they like will still give them practice that they can apply to material they'll have to read for classes later on. Help your kids find what they like and they'll
thank you for it later in life.

Rick Walton: [careful readers will catch his reference to a certain Strongbad email]
We have this problem in our country, in the world, of assuming thateveryone is like us. Everyone thinks like us, learns like us, believeslike us, or at least should. In education that attitude is especially dangerous. In my experience in education there are always new panaceascoming down the pipeline. Someone tries out a new program and discoversthat kids who aren't learning before are now learning. So let'sinstitute this program for everyone! And then they discover that somekids fail miserably. So someone comes up with a program that works withthem, and institute it for everybody. And another group of kids failmiserably. And on and on.

Good teachers, though, recognize that every child is different. (No twochildren are not on fire.) Every child learns in a different fashion.So you adjust your curriculum to allow for different learning styles.

Some people learn best by reading. Some by listening. Some people arevisual. Some have to do it. You can work with them to develop otherlearning styles, and they might improve in those styles, but thereality is, most people are going to be like Will [Terry], and learn a certainway. Reading is a means, not an end. If traditional reading does notachieve the end, but illustrated reading does, or listening, or gettingout of the field and doing, so be it. That's the way that person shouldbe allowed to learn. Even within reading text, there are differentstyles. Some learn from fiction. Some learn from nonfiction and can'tget into fiction. Both are fine. Whatever works.