The Power of Illustrators

Recently Jonathan Stutzman, author of Tiny T. Rex and the Impossible Hug and Llama Destroys the World, wrote on Twitter, “Illustrators don’t get the love they deserve.  Really.  Women illustrators?  Even less.  I work in a creative team w/ a talented illustrator @adoodlefox (who I’m also married to ❤) we have a handful of books coming out together.  We are a team and the books that we make are a collaboration between us—a combination of both of our talents and minds.  But I can’t tell you how many times she is left out compliments, press, tweets, questions, interview requests.  Someone even recently commented to my face (w/ Heather right there) that they were excited to see where MY career was going. ‘How exciting for you!’  Heather definitely isn’t the only one.  I see it with so many other amazing, brilliant illustrators.  (And probably way more that I haven’t seen or been privy to).  Which blows my mind because there would be no picture books without illustrators.”

Jonathan Stutzman and Heather Fox's first book together

I’ve only been a school librarian for two years, but something I’ve already noticed is how often we ignore the illustrator.  When my third graders were learning how to cite sources after using some really excellent picture book biographies, a lot of them asked, “Where do I write the illustrator?”  I realized I hadn’t made a line for that name.  I was starting my students with very basic MLA citations, and MLA (and just about every citation format) doesn’t require the illustrator, only the author. 

The people who put together citation standards likely weren’t thinking of illustrated books, assuming that users would be citing essays and academic texts that eschew artwork.  They probably didn’t picture children using books from the Ordinary People Change the World series (by Brad Meltzer and Christopher Eliopoulos), which has bright, engaging artwork, or the beautifully watercolored John Ronald’s Dragons (by Caroline McAlister and Eliza Wheeler).  But it points to the larger issue that Stutzman described: illustrators often don’t get their due.

Anyone who works with children’s books should know that a picture book, by definition, is a book told both through words and pictures.  Sometimes the storytelling balances evenly between the two; sometimes one outweighs the other.  Sometimes we get a truly glorious wordless picture books that tells an entire story with no words.  But what all of these have in common is this: if you take the pictures out of a picture book, the form ceases to exist.

It doesn’t just lose pretty pictures or illuminations; a picture book without pictures loses part of its heart.  The interplay between illustrations and words is crucial to this format.  Not only is the story reliant on artwork; young readers are drawn in by it.  So are adults, even if we don’t realize it, but it’s even more important for children--especially those who cannot yet read.  It’s been drilled into our heads that “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” but that might be better life advice than it is practical for choosing books.  Kids pick up books because they like the animal they see on the cover, or the sparkles, or the colors.  Some gravitate toward softer watercolors; some towards bright and bold graphics.  Sometimes they pick a book up because they recognize the style of artwork, without even knowing who the artist is.  Peter Reynolds is one such artist who comes to mind.  His illustrations can be found in his own books and in the books of numerous others, scattered throughout the library, and many of them are checked out because students recognize his style.

A page from Peter Reynolds' Say Something!

Why the disparity, then?  Why do we forget how important illustrators are?  I’m no expert, but I can make a few guesses.  Kids grow up with the goal of moving away from picture books.  They all want to read chapter books and are so excited when they finally read a whole book without any pictures.  And that in itself is not a bad thing!  Not every book is meant to have pictures, just like not every book is meant to have words.  Building literacy skills and word recognition is crucial.  But when we grow up with our goal to be moving away from books with pictures . . . what does that tell us about those pictures? 

I became a librarian partly because I love reading.  I was drawn to books because I love words and writing.  I don’t remember learning how special the pictures were as I grew up.  I used them to learn to read, to help me understand more complex stories, but was there an emphasis there?  I don’t know, but I don’t think so.  People spend their lives studying writing, often without realizing it.  Most schools require English to be taken through 12^th grade, where we learn how to piece sentences together and get meaning from others’ writing.  We have required reading that exposes us to great literature and ideas.  We read and write in every class, from essays in US History to lab reports in AP Chemistry.  We write emails, memos, Instagram captions.  But how many people continue to study art, or even pay attention to it?

Brian Selznick's stunning book spines

     I took my last art class in 8^th grade.  In high school, my electives were taken up by German and orchestra.  I didn’t learn about art the way I did about writing.  I didn’t learn how it worked or what it could do, or how to study and understand it like I did with writing.   

Art often remains a mystery.  It wasn’t until college that I discovered, almost by accident, that I like to draw.  The more I paid attention to art, the more I realized that art, like any skill, has certain foundations, and it can be taught.  That’s not to say art is easy, or that anyone can be a great artist.  But noticing things like how artists use shape, line, and perspective, and having your own opportunities to practice them, makes illustrations feel that much more accessible.  Just like stopping to revel in beautiful language, pausing to notice illustrations only adds to the magic of storytelling.  I think about how entranced I was when I discovered how Brian Selznick creates entire worlds out of silvery pencil lines, or how Sophie Blackall uses shape to drive the theme of time in Hello Lighthouse.  Learning how to use a comma or write a sentence doesn’t necessitate being the next Jason Reynolds or Meg Medina, but it might make us stop and pay more attention to their craft.  It might make us point out great writing to our students.  But we don’t know how to do that with art.

From Sophie Blackall's Hello Lighthouse

The school I teach at now is fortunate to have two great art teachers, but many don’t have even one.  Classroom teachers tend to be creative, but I haven’t met many who have any kind of art training or background.  Even having one is different than knowing how to teach it.  On top of that, overscheduled school days and overwhelmed teachers don’t have much time to add in art instruction. 

We aren’t raising students to notice art, or to understand it, or to create their own as they get older.  Picasso said it best: “Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”  There isn’t space for visual art once students move past elementary school, and sometimes not even then.  It can be hard to value something when you’ve never learned to understand it.

I didn’t learn enough about art until I took charge of my own learning.  I started paying attention to illustrations and learned more.  I’m lucky that my children’s literature professor in grad school emphasized studying illustrations, giving me the opportunity to expand my very basic knowledge.  If you want to do the same, and incorporate it into your own teaching, library, or life, here are some simple ways to start. 

1. Pick up picture books with illustrations that speak to you.  Take the time to really look at the them—the words and the pictures.  What are the pictures doing that the words can’t?  How do they work together?  If you took away the pictures, what would be missing from the story? 

2. Enlist an expert.  This can be your school’s art teacher, a museum docent, or someone else who has been trained to understand and explain art.  Tell them you’re interested in learning more and need help starting.  (This is also an excellent opportunity to collaborate with your art teacher.)

3. When looking at illustrations or other visual art, look for lines and shapes.  Everyone knows lines and shapes, but often in really incredible art, we don’t notice that an artist uses mostly triangles to create a complex beach scene, or that part of the reason your eye travels somewhere is because all the lines in that painting lead there.  Notice how the artist uses these basic elements--and then practice them yourself.  

4. Read interviews with illustrators.  Hearing them describe their craft in their own words is not just interesting; it’s illuminating.  Here are some to get you started:

• Brian Selznick at Scholastic 
• Christian Robinson at BookRiot
• Sophie Blackall at Let’s Talk Picture Books 
• David Wiesner at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (specifically on illustrating in the digital age)
• Aaron Becker at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast: 
• Joyce Wan at Miss Marple’s Musings

5. Read professional books about illustrating, such as Picture This by Molly Bang, to learn the basics about how illustrations come together.

6. Point out artwork to your students.  Share the name of the illustrator when you read a book together.  Incorporate visual literacy into your lessons.

7. Practice your own drawing.  You don’t have to be good!  Doodle, sketch, paint, mess around with colors and shapes and lines.  Try to copy someone else’s artwork, or get a how-to-draw book at the library—there are so many now, with so many different styles and drawings to emulate, that there’s something for everyone. (If you need a starting point, this one is lovely and fun.)

Finally, I wonder if we put too much emphasis on the “written by/illustrated by” distinction.  Acknowledging specific roles in putting a book together is important to each person’s talents, but at the end of the day, they are both storytellers.  Maybe when we share a picture book, we can simply say it’s “by” the people who made it.  Last Stop on Market Street is by Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson.  Llama Destroys the World is by Jonathan Stutzman and Heather Fox.  And so on.

Illustrators are incredible.  Let’s show them the same respect and appreciation we show our favorite writers. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go add an illustrator line to a works cited page.

To see Jonathan’s full Twitter thread, click here.

     To visit Heather Fox on Twitter and Instagram, go to @adoodlefox, and to visit Jonathan Stutzman, go to @thedustdancestoo.

The Paradox of Access

Update: I wrote this article over a year ago when I taught at a different school.  I'm now fortunate to work at a school that provides a generous library budget, but I still think about this issue a lot--especially as I know there are many school librarians in the same position.  I know that my opinion isn't shared by everyone, and I would love to hear other librarians' thoughts and perspectives on this important topic.

Recently a kindergarten teacher at my school came up to me and asked that I not let his students check out books if they have overdue items.  I cringed a little at this, and he said, “Gotta teach them responsibility.”  I went along with his wishes that week (mostly), but the idea nagged at me.  I learned in my school library courses that children should get books, full stop.  The most important parts of my job are putting books in children’s hands and getting them to read.  These are my top priorities; encouraging a love of reading is the reason I got into this job.  But I couldn’t completely disagree with this teacher, and the number of overdue and missing books in my library has been a growing concern since I started working there. 

Not even a week later, I saw a tweet that said, “Some say library fines ‘teach personal responsibility.’ But responsibility isn’t a core value of libraries; access is.  Families can choose for themselves if and how to teach the value of responsibility/accountability.”   While my concern isn’t on fines as much as it is actual checkout (we don’t do overdue fees at my school), the statement still holds true; according to the American Library Association, libraries prioritize access, not responsibility.  I read inspiring articles by teachers and librarians on the importance of remembering that replacing a few missing books is only a minor inconvenience when a missing book means a child has a story at home.  I applaud that attitude and I agree that, in theory, access beats overdue books.  But carrying this out is a lot harder.

My title does not stop at librarian; I am a teacher librarian.  I work in an elementary school, I write lesson plans, I teach classes.  Isn't one of the tasks of a teacher to teach responsibility?  We can say all we like that those values should be taught in the home, but teachers—at some schools in particular—have to guide students on them as well.  And as a teacher librarian, isn’t that my job, too?

Second, and even more importantly, the idea that a missing library book means a child now has a book in their house is a wonderful thought.  I want my students to have as many books at home as possible.  But when a book stays at home, it leaves a gap in the library collection.  I don’t get money for new books at my school; any books I’ve added have been ones I’ve purchased with my own money, or are donations from my generous friends.  I have students who have more than ten missing books.  School policy states that students must pay for missing library books, but the majority of mine cannot afford that fee.  A missing book is a book gone.  I know those books could be enjoyed by so many more students if they came back to the library and filled our shelves.

Which brings us back to the point of access: if the librarian cannot replace books, there are fewer books for others to check out.  Already, in the course of just six months, I’ve watched my already meager library collection dwindle down to the point where whole shelves are empty.  Teachers walk in and point out how paltry it is, as if I could wave my wand and make books magically appear. 

I wish I could.

When missing books are a school-wide problem in a place where there is no funding, it severely limits access to everybody.  Allowing students to continue to checkout books when they have overdue or missing items only increases the number of books not returned.  It perpetuates a cycle and makes access, the core tenet of libraries, unattainable.

I love the idea of allowing students to continue taking books home no matter what their record looks like.  But I feel it is, at least in part, my job as a teacher librarian to set an example for responsibility and cultivate a library that is as full of books as it can be.  Continuing to allow students to take books and never return them does not encourage access.  It effectively ends it.

Take a (Nonfiction) Walk

Introducing students to research is one of the best parts of being a school librarian.  They get to learn how to navigate the information universe and teach themselves about the things that interest them.  But where to start?  Building a strong research foundation is crucial for students, especially in a world where you can find information (real or not) anywhere.  And just because a student has the right book or database doesn't mean they know how to use it for fact-finding.

Research is best introduced in stages.  The first stage to the research process isn't reading or note-taking--it's finding information.  Knowing how to locate the right resources is one of the most important skills you can teach.  It empowers students to be independent learners. 

I start with teaching students how to use the library.  This is something I do with 2nd grade; 2nd graders know the basics of how the library is set up, but they haven't yet discovered its full potential.  Teaching them to use online sources and databases is also important, but I think nothing beats an exploration of the actual library, or as I call it, a nonfiction walk.  A nonfiction walk is hands-on, where the kids get to move around and discover some really cool books.  It's a sort of scavenger hunt, but instead of giving students topics to find, let them find their own interests.  It's much more exciting and allows them to find the sections they'll return to.

Want to do your own nonfiction walk?  Here's how.

1. Plan!  Before you start, LABEL the nonfiction section.  Make sure you have signs for each Dewey section, and for lots of the subsections as well.  You don't need to label every single subtopic, but this is crucial to making the library friendly and navigable to kids (and teachers).  I use word labels and picture labels for friends who aren't as strong of readers.  There are lots of freebies online (check out TPT) for this if you don't want to make your own!

Make kid-friendly Dewey guides to hang up.  Kids don't need to memorize the system, but they'll love knowing how it works and how to use it.  Post them throughout the nonfiction section.  This is mine, based off this design:

2. If your library is set up for it, sit your class down in the nonfiction section.  I like to remind them that the fiction section is alphabetical by author, and then let them guess how the nonfiction is organized.  Once we've made a few guesses, I explain that nonfiction books are organized by subject, under a cool system called the Dewey Decimal System.  The whole section goes in order, 000-999, and every section has a number!  I point out a few sections to the kids and make sure they know about spine labels. 

3. Point out all of your signage.  Kids like knowing that they don't have to memorize everything and that the nonfiction section is very user-friendly.  Indicate the different kinds of signage you have and what students should look for.

4. Give each student a Nonfiction Walk worksheet, a pencil, and a clipboard (kids love clipboards).  They'll write down 5 nonfiction subjects they're interested in.

 

5. Once they've written down their subjects, let them explore!  When they find a book in the category they're looking for, they'll write down the call number on their worksheet.

That's it!

A few watches/tips:

• Encourage students to think broadly when they're writing down topics.  If someone writes down five different marine animals, they're not going to be exploring much.
• Kids will inevitably need help, but guide them back to the signage to find what they're looking for.  Once it clicks, they'll feel empowered.
• When modeling the activity, I explain that they don't have to pull the entire book off the shelf to write down the call number.  They can just look at the spine, or slide it out partway if needed.  Otherwise you might end up with a lot of books dropped in random places (I learned this one the hard way). 
• Some of my students wrote down really specific subjects.  One was upset because he couldn't find a book on piranhas--turns out, we didn't have one.  But he had found all the books on fish!  It's okay not to have books on every single subject.  Encourage students to find something similar, and provide suggestions when needed.
• I'm fortunate that my teachers stay with their classes during their library time.  Having another adult is so helpful when you have 20+ 7-year-olds all looking for something different, but don't panic if it's just you and there's a little chaos.  If not everyone grasps it right away, there will be plenty more opportunity to practice.
• If your teachers don't stay, let them know what skills you're working on in the library.  They'll be glad you're building research skills that they can connect to in class.
• I do this lesson in conjunction with when the classes are starting their research projects.  Starting it a week or two earlier than the classroom teacher gives students a boost and saves the teacher some of the work of explaining research basics.

Nonfiction walks are simple to do and highly effective for students.  Nothing beats watching that magic moment when something clicks, and they realize they be independent library users.