Publisher Description

The Art of Comprehension' [creates] an invisible thread that stretches across varied professional contexts to connect art, literacy, and all content areas. From the forward by Dr. Mary Howard ' The Art of Comprehension: Exploring Visual Texts to Foster Comprehension, Conversation, and Confidence, Trevor A. Bryan introduces his signature method for enhancing students' understanding and thinking about all textsboth written and visual. By using what he calls 'access lenses (such as faces, body language, sound/silence) you can prompt all your students to became active explorers and meaning-makers. Organically and spontaneously, your classroom will become more student-centered.' ' Discover inventive ways to prompt students to notice, think about, and synthesize visualsusing the same observation and comprehension skills they can bring to reading and writing Learn about ways to unravel layers of meaning in picture books, chapter books, artwork, poetry, and informational text Explore the book's eclectic collection of art and illustration, by acclaimed illustrator Peter H. Reynolds, 19th century masters, and more. Bryan's approach allows all students to engage meaningfully with texts and join the classroom conversation.' With this comes the greatest reward of all: confidence and independence for all kinds of learners.

The author describes ways to employ the visual arts in the writing workshop with reasons to do it, guides for trying it, images, and worksheets.

Visual Literacy examines how teachers can use visuals to improve learning for all students. It provides teachers with a foundation in visual literacy, defined as the ability to read, think, and communicate with visually presented information. Results of studies of students’ using visual information indicate that most students are clearly lacking in the tools needed to use visuals effectively. The book orients teachers to visual literacy and the world of visuals. It discusses various classroom tested strategies and activities for all students, including second language learners, and students with special needs. Stressing visual literacy skills helps students understand a visual more deeply so they can master the content they are learning. Teachers will learn to employ a literacy triad of reading, thinking, and communicating to aid students in their study of visuals. First, they inquire into the visual, reading it for content and context, including assessing the authenticity of the document. Second, they think about the document by analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating it to come up with answers to their inquiry. Graphic organizers help students decipher the content and understand the meaning of the visual document, connecting it to prior and future instruction. Third, they communicate their findings using visuals.

This primer is designed to teach students the interconnected arts of visual communication. The subject is presented, not as a foreign language, but as a native one that the student "knows" but cannot yet "read." Responding to the need she so clearly perceives, Ms. Dondis, a designer and teacher of broad experience, has provided a beginning text for art and design students and a basic text for all other students; those who do not intend to become artists or designers but who need to acquire the essential skills of understanding visual communication at a time when so much information is being studied and transmitted in non-verbal modes, especially through photography and film. Understanding through seeing only seems to be an obviously intuitive process. Actually, developing the visual sense is something like learning a language, with its own special alphabet, lexicon, and syntax. People find it necessary to be verbally literate whether they are "writers": or not; they should find it equally necessary to be visually literate, "artists" or not. This primer is designed to teach students the interconnected arts of visual communication. The subject is presented, not as a foreign language, but as a native one that the student "knows" but cannot yet "read." The analogy provides a useful teaching method, in part because it is not overworked or too rigorously applied. This method of learning to see and read visual data has already been proved in practice, in settings ranging from Harlem to suburbia. Appropriately, the book makes some of its most telling points through visual means. Numerous illustrated examples are employed to clarify the basic elements of design (teach an alphabet), to show how they are used in simple syntactic combinations ("See Jane run."), and finally, to present the meaningful synthesis of visual information that is a finished work of art (the apprehension of poetry...).

This cultural who's-who illuminates 50 famous figures, from Leonardo da Vinci to Coco Chanel, through the fascinating trivia of their lives. Artist James Gulliver Hancock depicts historical icons in quirky annotated portraits surrounded by their associated possessions, baggage, and foibles. Hemingway's hobbies, Amelia Earhart's preferred dessert, Martin Luther King Jr.'s favorite TV show—each portrait reveals the ordinary quirks of these extraordinary people and captures their personalities in the process. An exquisitely illustrated almanac and cultural literacy cheat sheet, this fun and informative collection offers both history buffs and art lovers a treasure trove of interesting facts about beloved artists, writers, thinkers, and dreamers.

The canonical work of cultural criticism by the “profoundly influential critic” (Artnet), in a beautiful thirtieth-anniversary edition, featuring a new foreword by esteemed visual artist Mickalene Thomas Called “one of the country’s most influential feminist thinkers” by Artforum, bell hooks and her work have enjoyed a huge resurgence of popularity since her passing in 2021. Her 2018 book All About Love has sold upwards of 700,000 copies, and posthumous tributes have credited her with being “instrumental in cracking open the white, western canon for Black artists” (Artnet). To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of her groundbreaking essay collection Art on My Mind, The New Press will publish a handsome, celebratory edition, featuring a new foreword by Tony-nominated producer and all-around creative phenom Mickalene Thomas and a new cover featuring original photos of bell hooks shot by African American photojournalist Eli Reed. This classic work, which, as the New York Times wrote, “examines the way race, sex and class shape who makes art, how it sells and who values it,” includes what Artforum calls “incisive essays” on the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Isaac Julien, Carrie Mae Weems, and Romare Bearden, among others. Her essays on Black vernacular architecture, representation of the Black male body, and the creative process of women artists, are complemented by conversations with Carrie Mae Weems, Emma Amos, Margo Humphrey, and LaVerne Wells-Bowie, which Kirkus Reviews calls “excellent indeed,” and “a real contribution to our understanding of the situation of black women artists.”