8 Picture Books That Build Visual Literacy

Visual literacy may be a term many haven’t heard. It’s the piecing together of a story from images and data in graphic form. What are the images telling the reader? Who are the characters? Their emotions? What are they experiencing? Pictures books help develop a child’s visual literacy skills by offering a story they tell themselves through images 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 is what we understand as reading and making meaning from words on a page. Picture books inform a child of event sequencing, plot development, and facial expression (emotional literacy). These skills help individuals create and decipher videos, infographics, photos, and other visualizations that are essential for understanding the world.

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 being the standard (it’s cheaper and easier to bind 32 pages). A picture book’s front cover signals the book’s theme through color and font. The front cover also introduces the principal characters.

How we read picture books

The layout of a picture book is nothing to sneeze at. A lot of thought goes into images and how their location on the page. Lines are used to draw the eye to specific areas of the images, 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 gaze gives cues to the reader where to look and what’s important to the character. Colors and lack thereof inform the reader as to the mood of the book. How do the colors and contrast in a picture book make you feel? Why is it important?

8 Standout Picture Books for Visual Literacy Development

I Walk with Vanessa by Paul and Antoinette Kerascoët

A heartfelt story of a girl who reaches out to a fellow student who’s being bullied. I Walk with Vanessa shows how kindness and solidarity can go a long way towards making someone feel safe and loved. Devoid of text, I Walk with Vanessa is a picture book in the purest sense. The reader is responsible for telling the story with no prompting text from the author. I Walk with Vanessa helps with developing emotional literacy. What emotions is Vanessa expressing? How do the other children look? What are they doing? How do their actions affect the outcome for Vanessa?

Similar to how directors use color to draw the viewer’s eye in a move, the Kerascoëts use color to show the reader what’s important. The lack of colorful backgrounds helps isolate Vanessa, making her journey even more sad and hopeful.

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. By far, my favorite was Mamoko in the Time of Dragons. The front cover of all Mamoko books introduces key characters the reader can choose to follow. Find your chosen 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.

For an added piece of fun, read the book backward and see how the characters change as you watch them progress through their adventure from end to beginning. Life isn’t always linear, and changing your perspective can open up a whole new conversation.

Wallpaper by Thao Lam

A little girl enters her new bedroom. She holds a box of her belongings. She hears chattering and laughing coming from her open window and peers out. There she finds a neighboring tree with a treehouse. 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 peels 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? Is she 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 really 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 starts with the frogs. Wiesner, the author of the picture book, Free Fall, takes the reader on an amazing adventure of flying froggy proportions.

Tuesday is a family favorite. Unlike other books on this list, Tuesday lends itself to a soundtrack of effects; screeching tires, barking dogs, flapping wings, and crow 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 from the rain. There on the wall, a door opens, revealing a distraught king. He hands them 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, the second title by Becker, finds the kids in the world stripped of color. This time, their dad follows them through the doorway.

This set of books is such a great way to teach children storytelling. Through vibrant artwork, Becker tells a story that begs for the reader’s help.

Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie De Paola

In Pancakes for Breakfast, our hero wakes with a hankering for pancakes, and nothing is going to stop her from getting them. De Paola’s simple illustrations lead the reader on a culinary quest where every turn only gets 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 likes it so much we roleplay the story, each taking turns playing the dragon, the knight, and the librarian. Sometimes he throws in a wizard to spice up things.

Drawn Together, written by Minh Lê, 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, of Vietnamese descent, has been raised in the U.S. and speaks only English. His grandfather, a Vietnamese immigrant, speaks only Vietnamese. Every week, the boy’s mother drops him at this grandfather’s. They sit in awkward silence until one day the boy starts 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 story I can’t read without getting choked up, even after the tenth time.

Pictures books develop visual literacy skills by teaching children how to transform pictures into stories. These skills translate into an array of non-textual applications.

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