Why Reading Illustrated Books with Your Child Advances Their Skills

A picture is worth a thousand words.  If your child is not yet a reader or is a struggling reader, illustrations are key to unlocking the worlds that await in books.

Illustrations help your child understand what a story is about.  When looking at beautiful, topical illustrations, your child is observing details, inferring ideas not explicitly stated, and predicting what may happen next.  When your child is sitting next to you seeing the pictures as you read, there is no lag between hearing the words and seeing the picture, which vivifies and solidifies concepts in the brain.

While reading a story, your child may demonstrate an oral language increase with a question about the illustration, a word, or an aspect of the story.  This indicates your child is listening, engaged, and interested to learn.  When your child asks you the same question with each read, it may reveal your child is trying to commit this particular detail to memory.  Let your child ask questions and be ready to answer.  (You can get creative with answers to help yourself continue to engage!)

As your child advances in acquisitioning language skills, the focus shifts more or less quickly to written words.  By reading with your child, both sets of eyes on the book, your child is able to transition at a self-actuating pace from pictures to text.  As letters are learned, your child may draw more attention to those.  As phonemes and digraphs are learned, your child may point those out.  And as words become familiar, your child will begin wanting to read: words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, pages, and books!