Review

Talking Beyond the Page: Readingand Responding to Picturebooks JanetEvans (Ed). (2009) London: Routledge.ISBN: 0 415 47696 8; 194 pp.

Edited collections can lack deep cohe-sion. Sometimes they are linked bybeing papers presented at a conference,or because the contributors are theeditors’ colleagues or friends. This oneis different. Compiled by a perceptiveteacher and critic, whose track record inworking with children, picture books,teachers and artists is as good as any-one’s, there is a true coherence in thecrafting of the ideas. The links aresubtle and challenging, serving wellthe artistic products of which thecommentators talk and write.

The editor has been well served byher contributors, not least by DavidLewis, who writes a sensitive introduc-tion outlining the different levels ofcomplexity that underpin the readingof picture books, both ours and chil-dren’s. The first level, he claims, arisessimply from the texts being ‘‘sharedbetween two different forms of com-munication – words and pictures’’. Thesecond involves ‘‘issues of modality, orlifelikeness . . . whether images areframed, and how they are framedwhere they are’’. The third level islinked to readers’ understanding ofirony. Here Lewis is at his most perci-pient, identifying ideas that underpinmany of the themes that follow:

‘‘A third order level of sophisticationarises when the pictures and words,however they are formed, begin to driftapart from one another, sometimes to thepoint where they seem to be referring toentirely different events or circum-stances . . . You have to work a bit harderto get the point, to see where the authorand illustrator are leading you’’ (p. xiii).

These levels are well illustrated in JanetEvans’ examples of children’s own read-ings. In her chapter on ‘‘Children’sthoughts about picture books’’ she pro-vides superb models of patient question-ing and insights into what children dowith their reading experience.

In the introduction to Part One,unambiguously called ‘‘It isn’t enoughto just read a book, one must talk aboutit as well’’, Evans sets out her stall witha powerful argument: ‘‘talk is crucial’’.This central thesis, that children’s ex-perience needs to be mediated bysensitive talk with more experiencedreaders, is developed throughout PartOne. The editor’s accounts of her ownfirst-hand work and analyses provideworking models of how to skilfullyhelp lookers and talkers become thin-kers and writers. The other chapters inPart One develop and extend thesemain ideas. Frank Serafini draws onKress’ and others’ understandings of‘‘visual systems of meaning’’, to pro-vide sharp and clear readings ofAnthony Browne’s illustrations, anartist whose work is one of the coherentthreads in this collection. MicheleAnstey and Geoff Ball make significantlinks between picture books and ‘new’(still so new?) literacies. Critical literacyscholars such as Freebody and Luke gettheir citations in this chapter, but Iwould have valued more socio-culturalcritique and more developed linksbetween new literacies and old con-cerns about literacy because these areissues that many in a UK context needto wrestle with – a point to which I willreturn.

There is important work from SylviaPantaleo on children’s responses to thepostmodern, and from Lawrence Sipeand Caroline McGuire, on endpapers,topics often overlooked in considera-tions of home-grown picture booksand, again, perceptively linked by theeditor to her general themes. VivienneSmith writes with characteristic clarity,dash and intellect on how young read-ers make and break the frames ofpicture books. She reminds us of Mar-garet Meek’s key questions when think-ing about helping children readpictures: ‘‘who sees?’’, ‘‘how do Isee?’’ and ‘‘what do I see?’’

Part Two of the book captures someof the diversity within ‘different texts’and ‘different responses’. The editorshares her knowledge, and her knackfor interpreting children’s readings.Morag Styles and Kate Noble makethe best pitch I have read on how

reading in multimodal ways can belinked with children’s development asthinkers. Evelyn Arizpe’s chapter pro-vides real insight into the multiculturalunderstandings that picture books canlead the young reader towards. PrueGoodwin shows her flair for bringingtheory to life, suggesting things thatteachers can actually do to engagechildren’s empathy, and to developpowers of inference in ways that couldachieve more than many of England’sNational Strategy units of work. Thevery best in the book comes last, withthe editor’s probing and illuminatinginterview with Anthony Browne. Iapplaud her tenacity and courage atletting the artist have the last word.

This is that too-rare kind of a book:one that has scholarship and depth,whilst offering a wealth of practicalideas that teachers, student teachersand teacher educators can, and will,draw on. My students will all read theeditor’s work, and Vivienne Smith’s, asmodels of clarity in academic writingand thinking about what happens, ifthey are lucky, in classrooms.

Because I value this book, I want topose some challenging questions thatarose from my reading of it: what is thenature of the continuity and growth inchildren’s development as readers thatis particular to picture books? How canwe explain that particularity to lessenthusiastic colleagues, to parents andto head teachers who hold the (newlytightened) purse strings? How canmany of the imaginative texts talkedabout so well in this collection link withother aspects of children’s thinking andfeeling (in science? In a thematic curri-culum?)? How could the insights froman Australian perspective on ‘multi-literacy’, offered by Anstey and Ball,help teachers in the United Kingdomclarify what literacy in general, andschool literacy in particular, looks like,especially in England post-NationalStrategy? I applaud the knowledgeand resourcefulness of the editor, andthe wisdom of the contributors to thisbook, but want them to go on thinkingabout those awkward questions.

Colin MillsUniversity of Manchester

Literacy Volume 44 Number 3 November 2010 149

r UKLA 2010. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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