My second son will be nine years old in September. He is an excellent reader. When he gets to the library to borrow books, however, he has a ritual. He scans the shelf for book covers that may catch his eye then he flips through the books and continues this ritual until he has found three books that he finds "interesting". What is he flipping the pages for? Pictures! If the book does not have an equal number of pictures to pages then he looks for another book.At first I worried that he was only choosing “baby books” but when I observed what was going on I started searching for books with pictures - lots of pictures.... and lots of words. The plan worked. Book after book he consumes. It never bothers him the length of the books, just as long as there are pictures in them.
I have observed that reluctant or struggling readers are intimidated by, mainly:
a. books that are grey i.e. too many words
b. books that seem too long. The first thing that this category of readers does is to “assess” the book by looking at the number of pages in the books.
c. books with too many words per page: “So much reading, Miss?”
I am happy that we are learning how to create e-books. I see them having several advantages over traditional books.
1. They can be customized to suit your learning needs.
2. Texts can be adapted through pictures and words per page to suit your students.
3. By their nature, story length may not be such an issue as with regular books.
4. They are engaging.
Pictured above is a story from The Living Books series by Mercer Mayer. This series features a number of enjoyable and interactive e-books that children love. They can even give us ideas about how to create our own e-books. More on these and other e-books in my next blog.
I endorse your findings/observations. I agree that through the use of e-books teachers can use images as well as music to stimulate and maintain interest in reading. We have to have students actively engaged in constructing their knowledge.
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