How the act of reading changes when the text is comprised of both words and pictures. Please give specific examples to support your observations.

Throughout all life stages, reading has always been a choice among avid bookworms. From children storybooks and fairy tales to young adult adventure to adult works of sci-fi and fiction. We are introduced to reading at a very young age, but I think one thing that really helps the young get into reading are the artworks and illustrations that are provided in earlier year texts. What is it about pictures in storybooks and novels that help a reader view the story differently?

It all depends on the reader and his or her preferences. It is understandable that a reader won’t like illustrations because it’s too much of a distraction, but that’s not certainly bad. I feel like illustrations and pictures in a novel or in a book really help with how the reader visualizes the different scenes and happenings, so it narrows it down to how the environment really looks, how the characters look all the way to the features on their faces to the clothes on their back. But not only that, it can definitely show what kind of culture takes place in that story.

Now, this isn’t a bad thing, but for me, reading a novel or a story without pictures, I start to develop my own idea of what the environment and the characters look like in the plot. But then as soon as a picture or illustration appears and I take a look at it, all my ideas of what the story is, is completely pushed out of my mind because of the picture that really represents the story itself. We might not all agree with the illustrations, but for people who read more non-illustrated works, it can be quite a frustration.

Good examples of how pictures and illustrations can have reading changes would be a children’s ABC’s book, and a young adult’s sci-fi novel. For children, an ABC’s book is one of the most important things in their life. Now, if all it had was text, and everything to describe A-Z without images or examples, how would thc children learn to know what started with A and what started with Z? How would they know that A is for that red fruit a teacher has on her desk, or how would they know that Z is for the striped four-legged creature at the zoo? Pictures play a big role in childhood. As for sci-fi, I’m sure it’s not hard for the young adult reader to develop their own imagery in their head, but the images in the novel could also help describe the intricate and ornate ideas of sci-fi novels.

I honestly think pictures and illustrations are important in a novel, but it’s also understandable that because of modern society, images are more suited for magazines and full color books, because novels are usually in black and white.

I think it’s all based on preference though.