Resources

by Susan Straub

Susan Straub is the Creator and Director of READ TO ME, a ground-breaking program that helps teen parents get to know the pleasures and profundities of picture books for young children, and encourages them to read to their babies. In the following exercise, Straub shows how wordless picture books can inspire teen moms to develop interesting, entertaining narratives for themselves and their babies, and suggests how wordless picture books might actually end up helping students read actual words.

EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY

Over the past dozen years, I have worked in high school classrooms with pregnant and parenting teenagers. How can a program that gets teen moms to read books to their babies contribute to the work of teaching writing to school children? Are there any points of relevant intersection? I think the following description of an exercise I use with the teen moms I work with might just encourage you to adapt the exercise to your own work and classrooms. Of course, if any of you are working with teen moms yourselves, I hope what I have to say is useful to you.

1. Only Connect

The first meeting is vitally important. I introduce myself and my workshops in a way that encourages the teens to participate. I say that we will learn something about raising our babies through the medium of picture books for children. I guarantee them that reading books to their babies will give them pleasure. Using books will help them have more fun raising their children.

A sad truth about this first (or any) READ TO ME session is that it may indeed be the last. These students have difficult lives, further complicated by having a baby to look after. Coming to school is not always possible or a priority. I call this problem discontinuity. Most teachers faced with this phenomenon develop ways of coping with their disappointments and inability to string lessons together sequentially.

So although I don’t repeat the dramatic first session (see #2 below) each time I offer a workshop, I do make sure I introduce myself and have a camera ready. Each workshop offers a new angle on reading to babies: we read and review picture books, make books for our babies, attend a lap-sit or toddlers demonstration at the nearest branch public library, and even meet a published writer-illustrator and have gift books autographed. Of course the more the young mother attends, the more varied and positive experiences with books for children she will have. However, I try to make each session engaging incase it is the only meeting for that young mother and me. The bottom line, getting teen moms to read to their babies, is the ever-present focus.

2. Reading Pictures is the Beginning of Reading

Ignoring their stares of disbelief, I take a close-up headshot of each student with my Polaroid camera. This ice-breaking activity is surprisingly entertaining, and launches a discussion about reading faces. I contend that a mother’s face is the first book a baby reads, and is the precursor to reading anything else. What does the baby see?

Then we pair up to share wordless picture books, doing our best to “read”the images in the pages. How do we read images? Well, I ask the pairs just to say what they see, based on the stories the pictures suggest. This encourages the teen moms not only to tell stories from picture prompts, but also to promote real creativity. At this point, we are pretty much introduced to each other and to the fun of the READ TO ME program.

Reading wordless picture books is a stimulating experience for all uf us, regardless of education or language. Following the thesis that a mother’s face is the first book a baby reads, I think a baby reads the pictures while someone tells him about his world. All of us readers began by looking at pictures in our books while a bigger person told us about them.This inevitably leads to our own ability to read the words ourselves.

Reading wordless books takes each of us back to the beginning again, and invites us to say what we see. Almost all children’s books are loaded with highly narrative illustrations, and we can shrink or elaborate the story according to our imaginative powers. This exercise proves we all have imaginative powers, a delightful reminder to new parents. Raising babies with stories and art can lift one’s spirits and make the process more entertaining.

Suggested books and/or author-illustrators can be found on the READ TO ME website, along with a 30-minute docu-training videotape for those interested in developing a READ TO ME program with their own group of parents and babies. Log on to the site at: www.readtomeprogram.org.