This week we have a
guest blogger, Jane Blatt, who is the author of a picturebook which is all
about books. Her reflections show how relevant the topic and representation of
books is even for the youngest of audiences.
Babies and the Bookness of Books
By Jane Blatt, author of Books Always Everywhere (illustrated by Sarah Massini. Nosy Crow
2013)
We
know how important it is for babies, even very small ones, to be read to by
parents or carers, snuggled safely in their arms but I am passionate about
babies also having the opportunity to explore books on their own. Children will
learn through their own explorations that books have pages which can be turned
backwards and forwards, that they have images which are interesting and colourful
and eventually, if books are held in a certain way, that images can look the
‘right’ way up and may even follow in a meaningful sequence. Playing with such
fascinating physical objects as books allows children not only to become familiar
with the ‘bookness’ of books (my term) but also
to learn more about the world about them through their bodies and senses. This
playfulness and exploration is part of the natural process involved in fundamental
general learning which all normally developing children gain in the first 3
years of their lives and which is the basis for all later skills. (Every Child Can Learn by Katrin Stroh,
et al, Sage 2008)
Books Always Everywhere
came about when Evelyn and I were reviewing data for a chapter on how picture
books can support the emotional learning of bilingual children (Arizpe, E. and Blatt, J. 2011 ‘How Responses to
Picturebooks Reflect and Support the Emotional Development of Young Bilingual
Children’, in B. Kümmerling-Meibauer (ed) Emergent
Literacy. Children’s Books from 0 to 3. Amsterdam: John Benjamins).
We were watching a video of an 8 month baby exploring books on her own. She was
sitting on the floor surrounded by all kinds and sizes of children’s books and
for some moments explored one in particular. She picked it up, dropped it, mouthed
it, moved it with her foot, opened it, felt it, weighed it in her hands, smelt
it, even looked at it from different angles, maybe even noticed that there were
different shapes or images on different parts of it. Her whole body was
focussed on the task she had started and continued on her own and for herself.
There were the occasional concentrated grunts from her totally integrated body
but no one told her what to do and certainly no one ‘helped’ her in her
exploration.
Later,
in another clip with this baby a few months later, we saw her making a mat on
the floor with books, then making the books into houses for small figures. She
piled them and built with them. She lay down with them and even put one of them
on her head as if it were a hat. She was gaining more and more experience about
the joys of the ‘bookness’ of books. She was also learning about ‘placing’,
‘matching’, ‘sorting’, ‘sequencing’, ‘building’, ‘banging’ and building up her
early general learning.
The
clips and discussion inspired me to write a picture book for babies exploring
the physical nature of books. Nosy Crow, a new publishing company, were excited
by the script: “One of the great things about the text is the elliptical,
compressed and lyrical nature of it”. ‘Book
Big/ Book Small/ Book Wide/ Book Tall... came to life through the illustrations
by Sarah Massini. The initial illustrations show only one baby and one book,
but as the pages turn, more and more babies and different kinds of books
appear. My original text went through some changes, not least losing the adult
interaction and a sense of developmental progress but the result has been
enjoyed by various reviewers including the Sunday
Times: “Using rhyme and no more than 2 words per page, Books Always
Everywhere, is a book lover’s dream. Books take centre stage in a range of
babies’ and toddlers’ real and imaginative lives” (Culture Section, 23.06.13)
A
variety of formats and sizes of books are represented in Books Always
Everywhere –board books, buggy books, books with holes- and the
illustrator has added images and words in some of them. The words and titles
are of course meant for the literate reader; some are real titles of fairytales
and nursery rhymes, others are made up as a joke that can be shared with babies
too, such as the book called ‘House Mouse’ upon which a small mouse is
sheltered by a book opened in the shape of a tent – much like the books in the
photograph. There is certainly lots to look at in the illustrations and one can
easily imagine much ‘spotting’ going on when the book is shared with an adult. The
words and the pictures also suggest relationships: ‘Book Give/Book Share’, and
a way of engaging with others and participating in a community.
The
book has been very successful. Is part of its success due to it being a book
about books in this technological world when books are being replaced by the
ibook? Are parents concerned that even babies are exploring digital gadgets too
early, or that they may not encounter books in the same way as previous
generations? Going back to my initial idea, unlike ipads or kindles, books can
be played with as toys, put on one’s head, sat on, given as presents, used to
build a house, dropped, hung from a tree, even. Will this generation of babies
miss out on learning about the ‘bookness of books’? Are our children losing out on the playfulness
of play? Does this matter? Will this book be seen in the future as a quaint and
outdated defence of books? Or will there still be, as the title suggests and is
summed up, with all the aspects of the babies’ enjoyment of books in the final
illustrations, ‘Books always.... everywhere?
Jane Blatt
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