The language in which we speak about art has become steadily more abstruse, though for thousands of years this was not the case, Today, we live in a kaleidoscopic new world of images. Is there a vocabulary we can learn in order to read these images? Is there something we can do so as not to remain passive when we flip through an illustrated book or wander through a gallery, or are there ways in which we can 'read' the stories within paintings, monumnets, buildings and sculptures? We say 'every picture tells a story', but does it? Taking a handful of extraordinary images - photagraphed, painted, built, sculpted - Alberto Manguel explores, with delight and erudition, how each one attempts to tell a story that we, the viewer, must decipher or invent. Whether delving into the love of life in the twentieth-century world of Joan Mitchell, or the brutal complexities of Picasso's treatment of his mistress; revisiting the riddles of the past in the fifteenth-century painting of Robert Campin, or exploring the heartrending life of 'the hairy girl' whose matted fur so astonished sixteenth-century Italy, he helps us to enjoy and explore the visual landscape we live in.

A #1 New York Times bestseller, this innovative and wildly funny read-aloud by award-winning humorist/actor B.J. Novak will turn any reader into a comedian—a perfect gift for any special occasion! You might think a book with no pictures seems boring and serious. Except . . . here’s how books work. Everything written on the page has to be said by the person reading it aloud. Even if the words say . . . BLORK. Or BLUURF. Even if the words are a preposterous song about eating ants for breakfast, or just a list of astonishingly goofy sounds like BLAGGITY BLAGGITY and GLIBBITY GLOBBITY. Cleverly irreverent and irresistibly silly, The Book with No Pictures is one that kids will beg to hear again and again. (And parents will be happy to oblige.)

Comics have gone from "scourge of the classroom" to legitimate teaching tools, and the Common Core State Standards for scholastic achievement now explicitly recommend their use in the classroom. Reading With Pictures: Comics That Make Kids Smarter unites the finest creative talents in the comics industry with the nation's leading experts in visual literacy to create a game-changing tool for the classroom and beyond. This full-color volume features more than a dozen short stories (both fiction and nonfiction) that address topics in Social Studies, Math, Language Arts, and Science, while offering an immersive textual and visual experience that kids will enjoy. Highlights include George Washington: Action President by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey, Doctor Sputnik: Man of Science by Roger Langridge, The Power of Print by Katie Cook, and many more. Includes a foreword by Printz and Eisner Award-winning author Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese, Boxers and Saints). A downloadable Teachers' Guide includes standards-correlated lesson plans customized to each story, research-based justifications for using comics in the classroom, a guide to establishing best classroom practices, and a comprehensive listing of educational resources.

Children Reading Pictures: New Contexts and Approaches to Picturebooks offers up-to-date research evidence on the responses of the primary audience for picturebooks – children. The new edition has retained the best of the original while expanding its scope in several directions, including the role of the art museum in helping children and their teachers to broaden and deepen their appreciation of the visual, and the significance of understanding diversity and inclusion while looking at illustrations in picturebooks, in digital form and in the art museum. In particular, the third edition: uses new case studies to bring to life exciting initiatives from teachers and art museum educators in the UK and beyond, examining the potential of picturebooks for overcoming cultural, educational, linguistic and other barriers in the classroom and in other settings continues to draw readers’ attention to significant international theoretical work in the field and provides structured advice for teachers and graduate students who wish to carry out their own research focuses on new research with pupils, teachers, art educators and researchers working on young people’s responses to a variety of visual texts, including digital forms and fine art, and through children’s own artistic creations, to develop a more nuanced understanding of visual literacy celebrates the glorious variety of outstanding picturebooks and their makers who offer rich challenge, amusement, pleasure and consolation to young readers in a changing, often troubling world Children Reading Pictures is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of education, art and children’s literature, as well as providing important information for primary and early years teachers, literacy coordinators and for all those interested in picturebooks and visual literacy.

Celebrate Earth Day with Dr. Seuss and the Lorax in this classic picture book about protecting the environment! I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. Dr. Seuss’s beloved story teaches kids to speak up and stand up for those who can’t. With a recycling-friendly “Go Green” message, The Lorax allows young readers to experience the beauty of the Truffula Trees and the danger of taking our earth for granted, all in a story that is timely, playful and hopeful. The book’s final pages teach us that just one small seed, or one small child, can make a difference. Printed on recycled paper, this book is the perfect gift for Earth Day and for any child—or child at heart—who is interested in recycling, advocacy and the environment, or just loves nature and playing outside. Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not. “Pretty much all the stuff you need to know is in Dr. Seuss.” –President Barack Obama

A new, interactive approach to storytime, The Whole Book Approach was developed in conjunction with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and expert author Megan Dowd Lambert's graduate work in children's literature at Simmons College, offering a practical guide for reshaping storytime and getting kids to think with their eyes. Traditional storytime often offers a passive experience for kids, but the Whole Book approach asks the youngest of readers to ponder all aspects of a picture book and to use their critical thinking skills. Using classic examples, Megan asks kids to think about why the trim size of Ludwig Bemelman's Madeline is so generous, or why the typeset in David Wiesner's Caldecott winner,The Three Pigs, appears to twist around the page, or why books like Chris Van Allsburg's The Polar Express and Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar are printed landscape instead of portrait. The dynamic discussions that result from this shared reading style range from the profound to the hilarious and will inspire adults to make children's responses to text, art, and design an essential part of storytime.