8 Fantastic Picture Books That Build Visual Literacy

Visual literacy may be something that many of us have never heard of before. It’s the piecing together a story from images and data in graphic form. Pictures books help develop a child’s visual literacy skills by offering a story that one tells themselves by examining what’s drawn on the page. The skill of visual literacy lends itself to a myriad of applications beyond picture books.

Foundational literacy begins with visual literacy.

Visual literacy comes before foundational literacy, which we understand as reading and meaning-making from words on a page. Picture books inform a child of event sequencing, plot development, and facial expression (emotional literacy). These skills help us create and decipher videos, infographics, photos, and other visualizations essential for understanding the world around us.

Questions to ask:

• What are the images telling the reader?
• Who are the characters? How do they feel?
• What are they experiencing?

What defines a picture book?

Most picture books contain less than 100 words of text and are anywhere from 32 to 48 pages long (32 is the standard because it’s cheaper and easier to bind 32 pages). The front cover of picture books often signals the book’s topic through colors and fonts and introduces the main character.

How we read picture books

The layout of a picture book is nothing to sneeze at. Much thought and time go into how the images are displayed on the page. Lines draw the eye to specific areas of the pictures, much like how a movie director directs the viewer’s attention to parts of the screen by focusing on them. Body language and gaze inform the reader how a character feels—their eye cues them where to look and what’s essential to the character. Colors and lack thereof educate the reader as to the mood of the book.

Questions to ask:

• How do the colors and contrast in a picture book make you feel?
• Why is it important?

Here is a list of 8 Amazing Picture Books for Visual Literacy Development

I Walk with Vanessa by Paul and Antoinette Kerascoët

A beautifully rendered story about a girl who reaches out to a fellow student whose being bullied, I Walk with Vanessa shows how kindness and solidarity can go a long way toward making someone feel safe and loved. Utterly devoid of words, I Walk with Vanessa is a picture book in the purest sense. The reader has to tell the story, the whole story, without any prompting text from the author. Some takeaways from this book are empathy, friendship, standing up for what’s right, identifying bullying, and how small acts of kindness can make a huge difference.

Mamoko in the Time of Dragons by Alekandra Mizielinska

So far, I’ve explored three of Mizielinska’s Mamoko picture books, and all have been a fun adventure, but by far, our favorite was Mamoko in the Time of Dragons. As with all Mamoko books, the inside front cover introduces key characters the reader can follow. Find your character on each page and tell their story. What are they doing? How did they get there? Who did they meet along the way? Each time you choose a new character, another piece of the story is unlocked.

Wallpaper by Thao Lam

A little girl sadly enters her new bedroom. She holds a box with some of her belongings. She hears chattering and laughing coming from her open window and peers out. There she finds a neighboring tree with a tree house. A group of friends is inside. She watches them for a moment, and then they notice her. Shy, the little girl ducks out of sight and discoverers several layers of wallpaper peeling from a corner of her bedroom wall. She peals them back to reveal a colorful world of her imagination. While there, she confronts the reasons for her shyness and discomfort. Will she like her new home? Can she make new friends? Will she be brave enough to say hello? We’ve all been in situations where we felt out of our element, but no one feels this way more than a child moving to a new neighborhood and house.

Tuesday by David Wiesner

Do we know what animals get up to when we’re not looking? Are we sure magic doesn’t lurk in the most mundane of places? Well, strange things are afoot Tuesday evening, and it all starts in the swamp with the frogs. Wiesner, the author of the picture book Free Fall, takes the reader on a fantastic adventure of flying froggy proportions.

Tuesday is a family favorite. Unlike other books on this list, Tuesday has a soundtrack of effects; screeching tires, barking dogs, flapping wings, and caws filled my son’s bedroom as we read this fanciful picture book.

Quest by Aaron Becker

What magic lurks in plain sight? Is it something only children can find? A brother and sister riding their bikes take refuge under a bridge when it begins to rain. There in the wall, a door opens, revealing a troubled king. He hands the kids a crayon and a map before being grabbed by angry guards. The kids follow and find a world stripped of color. Through their imaginations and quick thinking, they return color to the world.

Return, a second title by Becker, finds the kids in the world stripped of color once again, but this time, their dad follows them through the doorway.

This set of books is such a great way to get your child to become a storyteller. Through beautifully simple art, Becker tells a story that begs the reader’s assistance.

Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie De Paola

Ever woken up and had a craving? In Pancakes for Breakfast, our hero wakes with a hankering for pancakes, and nothing will stop her from getting them. De Paola’s simple illustrations lead the reader on a culinary quest where every turn seems to only get our hero further from her goal. Will she get her pancakes?

We love De Paola picture books in this house. The Knight and the Dragon is another family favorite. My son liked it so much that we roll play the story, each taking turns playing the dragon, the knight, and the librarian. Every once in a while, he throws in a wizard to spice things up.

Some takeaways from this book are perseverance, clever thinking, and a good sense of humor in the face of obstacles.

Drawn Together, written by Minh Le and illustrated by Dan Santat

Taking the idea of visual literacy to its utmost conclusion, Drawn Together tells the story of a young boy and his grandfather who don’t speak the same language. The boy, who is of Vietnamese descent, was raised in the U.S. and speaks only English. His grandfather, an immigrant from Vietnam, speaks only Vietnamese. Every week the boy is dropped off at his grandfather’s by his mother, and they sit in awkward silence until one day, the boy decides to start drawing. To his surprise, his grandfather likes art too, but instead of markers, he uses a calligraphy brush.

The conversation without words and the fantasy world the boy and his grandfather create builds a bridge that transverses culture, language, and time. It’s a beautiful story I can’t read without getting choked up, even after the tenth time.

Conclusion

The next time you’re reading a picture book with a child, or if you find yourself browsing through them at the library or bookstore, stop and study the images and ask: How do they make you feel? What’s happening to the characters? What makes the story a lasting one? Start a conversation with the child you’re reading with. You might be surprised at how insightful they are. You never know. They might show you something you missed.