Children Creating Artists’ Books: Integrating Visual Arts and Language Arts

Barbara J. Guzzetti
Cristal Marie Wooten

Teachers at every grade level have discovered that engaging children in book making has the power to motivate even the most reluctant writers. By creating a combination of graphics and written text, children engage in a kind of communication that transcends the sum of its parts -- their pictures, use of color, and words interact to convey messages with a new level of meaning (Hubbard, 1990; Johnson, 1997). Book making has been credited with helping to increase students’ self-esteem, as well as their ability to organize their thoughts and to think critically (Bailey, 1995, online abstract).

Related Postings from the Archives Integrating Literacy Lessons and the Visual and Communicative Arts by Joan Gipe and Janet Richards Review of The Arts in Children’s Lives by Linda Labbo

Although most children’s books are filled with pictures, most curricula for teaching writing ignore the role of visual images in the writing process. Typically, methods for teaching writing focus on text. Even relatively new approaches -- such as brainstorming, collaborative writing, and story webbing -- emphasize verbal information. In some cases, however, visual images have been used as stimuli to generate writing ideas or evoke emotional responses. This has been successful in improving student self-image and enhancing literacy development (Bailey, 1995). The opportunity to create visual images can also provide the motivation and enthusiasm often lacking for typical writing assignments.

Incorporating the visual arts in the language arts has other benefits, as well (see, e.g., Godlewski, 1990). When art teachers and classroom teachers collaborate, they gain interdisciplinary understanding from each other. Their students increase their knowledge of concepts, terms, and skills in both the arts and language arts (Rearick, 1995, online abstract).

Artists’ Books as Children’s Books

“Artists’ books” consist of artwork conceived in book form and created in an avant-garde spirit (Dalberto, 1983). They combine visual images, thoughts, and text within a single structure. (Several samples, created by article coauthor Cristal Wooten, are shown as borders to this section. Click on an image for a larger view, and use your browser’s “back” button to return to the article text.) Henri Matisse is one well-known artist who used this medium of expression when, in the 1940s, he created cut-outs in bound colored sheets, wrote an accompanying text in his own hand, and extended the text with an index annotated with symbols that visually described each chapter (Godlewski, 1990). Artists’ books are displayed in public and university libraries, where they are often housed in special collections. They are also frequently displayed at art museums. Although some suggest that only the creations of professional artists can be deemed artists’ books (Dalberto, 1983; Katz, 1999), the benefits of having children engage in such book making seem clear. Thunder-McGuire (1992, 1994) reports the reflective judgment and productive use of imagination seen in young children when they create their own artists’ books. These explorations demonstrated that the process of creating their own artists’ books caused children to activate the “inner critics” that guide their creativity. Children making artists’ books exemplified children making art -- rather than simply doing something with materials -- as well as their becoming authors who gained new insight into and facility with the composing process. In one school-based project, volumes of bound paper (called “idea keepers”) were offered to third-grade students (aged approximately 8 years) to explore how their drawing, writing, and talking helped them clarify and document their interests, speculations, and ideas (Lund, 1994). When students were given journal-sketchbooks, the plots of their stories challenged them to develop new drawing strategies. While most drew in solitude, texts were shared among students. Students discussed their narratives and drawings in a kind of storytelling that demonstrated their understanding of language as a means of expression to complement their drawing. As they made decisions about refining and editing their texts and illustrations, students learned that a finished drawing is the outcome of many drawings, and that finished stories are the product of many transformations.

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Our Partnership

Cristal, the second author of this article, is an art teacher who teaches after-school and summer classes sponsored by the Phoenix (Arizona, USA) Parks, Recreation and Library Program. A recent class included 12 European American children (1 boy and 11 girls), ages 8 to 11, from mostly middle-class homes. The class met in downtown Phoenix for two weekly three-hour sessions over a period of ten weeks. This was Cristal’s third year teaching in this program; she taught the class in the same way she would if she had been based in a school setting. It was, however, her first time teaching students how to create artists’ books, a lesson which occupied one hour of each three-hour session. In the past, she had taught both elementary and secondary students elements of artists’ books (e.g., bookbinding or printmaking). From these experiences, Cristal had speculated that students at all levels might enjoy and benefit from creating artists’ books.

Cristal had been enrolled in a content literacy class taught by Barbara (first author of this article) during the semester prior to this project. In that class, Barbara had advocated writing across the curriculum, the use of trade books and multiple texts in content areas, and interdisciplinary and integrated instruction. She had also advocated an approach to instruction in which teachers guide students as inquirers into their own learning.

Since artists’ books are a relatively new vehicle for instruction in the classroom (Drucker, 1994), Cristal asked Barbara to help her describe the artistic and literary processes the children in her after-school program used, and the products they created. Together, as an art teacher and a language and literacy professor, we formed a partnership to investigate how creating artists’ books might improve students’ learning in both language arts and visual arts. We wanted to provide a portrayal of the children’s processes and products that might be useful to other teachers, and to share our knowledge of helpful resources. We were curious to discover what (if any) special benefits the creation of artists’ books would have for the children, aside from those they can experience in traditional book making.

We divided our efforts to accomplish these goals in a complementary fashion. During the classes, Cristal presented the new concepts and vocabulary of artistic techniques (e.g., mono-print, block print, symmetrical print) and tools (e.g., brayer, acrylic ink), and of structural components of the book (see Figure 1). She did so both visually and orally through demonstrating, showing examples of products, and explaining how to use the tools for the various techniques. On their own, students selected how they would incorporate these tools and techniques in creating their artists’ books in the way they believed would best suit their purpose. Cristal also gave the students practice in following directions as she posted and explained written instructions for making leaf rubbings, Styrofoam block prints, mono-prints, and butterfly bindings. (Directions for teachers about making artists’ books are available here.) Students were then free to incorporate these techniques and apply the concepts as they saw fit in their own books. Cristal’s approach embodied the principles of process writing, in which students brainstormed and created visual images in prewriting, writing, and revising -- first in draft and then in final form (Graves, 1983).

As Cristal demonstrated and answered questions, Barbara circulated around the room, stopping to read the children’s texts and write with them, and referring them to the classroom resource books and posted written directions as needed. She talked with the students about the impetus for their poems and stories, their meanings, and their illustrations. She interviewed the children (and some of their parents) about composing and illustrating processes; photographed their stories, illustrations, and final books; and audiorecorded or made written notes about their oral readings of their stories and their comments about them.

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The Students’ Stories

The students began by making a list of all the reading materials that they were interested in. Individual lists included a full range of materials, from favorite books to magazines about video games. Next, the students examined their lists and came up with one word that classified the items in a general category; these category words would become the topics of their artists’ books. After students had their topics -- which included gardening, beauty, entertainment, friendship, and animals -- they wrote as many words as they could that related to them, forming an idea bank. These words gave the students something to look at to get ideas for the images and the text.

Despite this uniform beginning, students approached the creative process in various ways. Some created the illustrations first, and these became a stimulus for creation of the text. Others created the text first, and then created illustrations as support for their writing. Some students used role-playing or play-acting with oral language that then became written language. All of them, however, related and relied on their out-of-class knowledge, the available resources, and their present interests to assist in the composing process.

Following are our observations of individual children whose artist’s books exemplified the unique literary and artistic benefits of taking an approach to book making that emphasizes and values the illustrations as much, if not more, than the text.

Charles. Charles (pseudonyms are used for the children), an 11-year-old and the only boy in the class, demonstrated how students relate their pleasures to their present resources and literacies. Charles began gardening when he was four years old. He started by helping his mother, but now he does most of the gardening at home by himself. Outside, he tends to tropical and exotic plants -- including mango trees, a guava tree, date palms, and a passion fruit vine. Inside, he waters and fertilizes orchids and a soursop, a spiny fruit that tastes like pineapple, grown from seeds he got in the plant’s native Hawaii. Charles thinks that gardening is fun and pretty easy.

Because he enjoys gardening so much, he chose to create his artist’s book, Gardening, by using each letter in the word to create a descriptor of his hobby. His text, a poem, read as follows:

Growing
Anywhere
Roots
Dirt
Easy
Needs Water
Is Fun
Needs Sunlight
Good

The content of Charles’ poem is not typical of his gender or preadolescent age. The words he chose represented his experiences with and knowledge of gardening. He was very independent in how he worked, figuring out the text and the graphic processes on his own. Occasionally, he would talk over his ideas with the other older student in the class.

The children were free to choose a method of illustration that was best for their poem, and Charles decided to use Styrofoam block prints and leaf rubbings. He created block prints of a date palm and a cactus to illustrate his book. He used oleander and citrus leaves for his rubbings. His choice of colors demonstrated his detailed observations of the world around him, a common reason children use color to communicate (Hubbard, 1990). Charles used a wide variety of media to illustrate his book and communicate his ideas. He used ink stamps for printing the text, thereby making the words a work of art. He also created mono-prints for backgrounds to offset his illustrations and colored-pencil drawings of plants and their root systems. (Click here to visit a gallery of images depicting Charles’ creation of his artwork.)

Through the process of creating his book, Charles learned new ways to integrate his interests and his literacy practices. A shy child who seldom spoke unless spoken to, Charles was able both to express his interest in and to demonstrate his competence with his hobby through his artist’s book. Charles showed enthusiasm and increased self-confidence as he elaborated on his illustrations and text.

Charles’ artist’s book became a vehicle that allowed him the opportunity for self-expression and public recognition when he shared it with other children, his teacher, and his mother. His illustrations allowed him to assume the role of a teacher as his readers learned about new plants and flowers while Charles discussed his book with them. Charles was able to spell the names of all the exotic and tropical plants he illustrated, to articulate the care they required, and to give a brief history of each plant. Charles’ emphasis on the graphics became a way for him to extend the written text with both a visual and an oral text that elaborated on the concepts in his book.

Sarah. An eight-year-old girl with an interest in animals and a talent for art, Sarah used the same poetic form as Charles had for the text of her book, Animals:

Alligator
Nature
Iguana
Monkey
Anteater
Lion
Shark

Sarah’s ambition to be an artist showed up in her illustrations. The animals she created were cartoon-like characters with elements of Japanese animation, such as large eyes. Sarah was able to incorporate her existing knowledge of graphic style and technique to communicate her meanings. She sometimes wore a t-shirt to class that came from an animation studio known for its cartoon characters. She often read about and saw examples of Japanese animation on the Internet. Her drawings and text reminded us of Dyson’s (1999) description of how young children make extensive use of media texts in the production of their own written work.

Sarah’s father validated her efforts and acknowledged her artistic and literacy development in several ways. First, he accompanied her to each session and took photographs of her and her classmates’ artists’ books and other art projects. Second, he used his computer to publish his daughter’s art on their family’s Christmas cards. Third, he was investigating using Sarah’s art to decorate a new children’s hospital being built near the hospital where he works as a nurse. In these ways, Sarah was encouraged to express herself in her drawing and writing, and she learned to respect her artistic and expressive talents -- a common outcome when the writing and illustrating processes complement each other (Flickinger, 1991). Her professional-looking illustrations and her clever text provide evidence of why adults who are significant in the lives of children, such as parents and teachers, are encouraged to be interested in, involved in, and ready to discuss and ask questions about children’s drawing and writing processes (Thompson, 1990).

Melinda. Another child who, like Sarah, expressed her knowledge in an artist’s book of nonfiction is Melinda, a nine-year-old girl who showed her understanding of cause-and-effect relationships in life science. She created an artist’s book titled The Food Chain, with a surprise ending (two sample pages are shown below). Her text read as follows: “The bird eats the worm, the cat eats the bird, the dog eats the cat, the lion eats the dog, the alligator eats the lion, the man eats the alligator, the shark eats the man, BAM!” When asked why there was a “BAM!” at the end, Melinda replied, “The shark blows up because everyone ate so much. So, when the shark ate, it exploded because he was fat ’cause every single person in here ate something, and they got so fat, so it made him even fatter.” Her text and illustrations allowed her to integrate science with other subjects, and to apply scientific concepts in a personal way (Reif & Rauch, 1994).

Melinda crafted her story by first drawing animals that were interesting to her, and then turning them into Styrofoam blocks. She began play-acting with the Styrofoam blocks of animal shapes, using a cardboard theater stage she had created for another activity in which the children made puppets. Her acting out of the cat chasing the dog prompted her to develop the plot line of the food chain. By creating her images first and manipulating them in play, Melinda gained the confidence that play can provide and was able to write the words that illustrated her understandings of the relationship among the animals (Brascombe & Taylor, 2000). Her talk and her drawings served as symbolic tools for creating her written text.

Most of Melinda’s illustrations were large block prints created for their large impact and ability to support the bold text. For example, one of Melinda’s graphics that complemented her passages and demonstrated her scientific understanding of the food chain was a block print of an alligator arising from the water to devour a lion. The block print consumed almost the entire page.

Writing the supporting text allowed Melinda the opportunity to rehearse strategies such as invented spelling (abbreviating alligator as al) and process writing (prewriting, drafting, and revising). Most of her revisions were done at the local level, with minor changes in phrasing, as it typical for students of this age (Scadivola & Bereiter, 1983). Through her texts and her supporting illustrations, Melinda was also able to represent and reinforce her science learning.

Dina. Dina was another student who bridged her social and academic literacies through her artist’s book, but unlike the others, she did so with fiction. Dina was a tiny, blonde eight-year-old, one of the youngest in the class, whose mother is an elementary classroom teacher. At home, Dina liked to read the Pixie Tricks books (by Tracey West, published by Scholastic). The series of early chapter books tells the stories of 14 fairies that escape their land, the Otherworld. Sprite is a fairy that has to trick them to come back. He enlists the help of a human girl, Violet, in the process. The books chronicle the camaraderie and cooperation between Sprite and Violet.

Dina chose to pattern her book, Friends, after this series. Her text described her own friends and her relationships with them and with Sprite, and contained lines such as, “She is nice. She is good. They work together.” Dina was able to express and extend her understandings of the theme of the Pixie Tricks books through creating her own book about friendship. Her drawings and block prints represented the stages of a friendship, into old age. As shown in the image below, she symbolized the aging process on the last page by creating a tree whose brown and yellow leaves fall on to the aging Sprite’s hat. Her words on this page read, “He grows old.”

In ways like these, Dina’s text served as inspiration for the illustrations that further conveyed her meaning. Her written text expressed her cultural identity as a consumer of fantasy and fiction. By extending her home reading to her in-class composing, Dina bridged her social and academic literacies (Dyson, 1999).

Angela. One of the features of artists’ books is that their stories can be extended outside the text block, into structures of the book that do not normally contain text or graphics. Angela, a nine-year-old girl, wrote a pattern book called My Favorite Things in which, without interrupting the rhythm of the surface structure of the text, she extended the meaning or deep structure of the words.

Angela wrote with a predictable text structure, including lines such as, “Pie, Pie, I love Pie. How about you? Eggs, Eggs, I love eggs cause they’re good. Dogs, Dogs, I love dogs....” On the page with the text about the dogs, she drew two dogs. Angela then attached a cut-out of a cat, through which she ran a thread so that it could move up and down the book’s spine. The cat could run out of the story (and the book), thereby escaping the dogs. Angela elaborated on her graphical extension with a verbal explanation: “The cat’s running away from them yelling, ‘You can’t bite me!’”

The effect of Angela’s external illustration was that other children became curious about her book. It drew readers into the text, even when the book was closed. In this way, her book was an example of how powerfully motivating creating artists’ books can be in comparison to more traditional book making activities that overemphasize text and subordinate or exclude illustrations.

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Common Benefits

Although each of the children approached the process of creating text and illustrations to represent or form their understandings differently, and each developed and expressed their artistic and literary abilities in ways unique to them, we observed some common benefits to the artists’ books project. First, children learned that book making can be a vehicle to express and extend their understandings of concepts -- either abstract concepts, like friendship, or concrete concepts, such as the food chain. By making artists’ books, children became familiar with the structural components of a book and how those components can be used to express theirs or others’ ideas. Second, children learned that text and visual images can enhance each other to represent ideas. Third, the emphasis on illustrations motivated otherwise reluctant writers to create a text that would extend their ideas. Fourth, the unique structure of artists’ books drew students into reading one another’s texts in an interactive way, either by manipulating the graphics or by questioning and discussing their understandings as they shared their books. Fifth, the students widened their understandings of what art is. They realized that art is not always a painting on a wall. The children demonstrated that art could take many forms, including the print of the text itself or even the book binding. Finally, the children learned that books can take many forms, and that ideas can be represented in myriad ways.

Our observations of and interactions with the students convinced us that children can be artists, too, and that they can use their thoughts and their language to create complementary art and text in book form -- just as Matisse did. Some used their texts as inspiration for their illustrations, while others used their illustrations as inspirations for their texts. Whichever way they approached the process, the outcomes were similar: Each child left the project feeling and looking like an artist, and feeling and looking like a writer. Even the very title of the project they had accomplished confirmed their enhanced image of themselves as artist-authors and author-artists.

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References

Bailey, M. (1995, October). The impact of integrating visuals in an elementary creative writing process. Paper presented at the annual conference of the International Visual Literacy Association, Chicago, IL. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 391492) Abstract available (retrieved June 1, 2002): www.edrs.com/Webstore/Detail.asp?q1=@Meta_PubID%20406907&txtSort=Meta_DocID[D]&txtMaxdisplayed=10&txtDocType=ED,EJ
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Brascombe, A., & Taylor, J. (2000). It would be as good as Snow White: Play and prosody. In K. Roskos & J. Christie (Eds.), Play and literacy in early childhood: Research from multiple perspectives (pp. 169-187). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
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Dalberto, J. (1983). Collecting artists’ books. Drexel Library Quarterly, 19(3), 78-99.
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Drucker, J. (1994). Artists’ books and the cultural status of the book. Journal of Communication, 44(1), 12-42.
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Dyson, A.H. (1999). Coach Bombay’s kids learn to write: Children’s appropriate of media material for school literacy. Research in the Teaching of English, 33(4), 367-402.
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Flickinger, G.G. (1991). Pen pals and collaborative books. The Reading Teacher, 45(1), 72-73.
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Godlewski, S. (1990). Livres d’artiste: Henri Matisse, Jazz. School Arts, 89(8), 39-42.
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Graves, D. (1983). Writing: Teachers and children at work. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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Hubbard, R. (1990). There’s more than black and white in literacy’s palette: Children’s use of color. Language Arts, 7(5), 492-500.
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Johnson, P. (1997). Pictures and words together: Children illustrating and writing their own books. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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Katz, B. (1999). Babette Katz: Creator of artists’ books. School Arts, 99, 33-34.
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Lund, P. (1994). Idea-keepers: Young children’s drawings and writings. Visual Arts Research, 20, 20-28.
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Rearick, M. (1995, May). Improving instruction in the language arts and in the arts through book-making: A collaborative inquiry in a second-grade classroom. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the New England Educational Research Association, Portsmouth, NH. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 409563) Abstract available (retrieved June 1, 2002): www.edrs.com/Webstore/Detail.asp?q1=@Meta_PubID%20424978&txtSort=Meta_DocID[D]&txtMaxdisplayed=10&txtDocType=ED,EJ
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Reif, R.J., & Rauch, K. (1994). Science in their own words. Science and Children, 31, 31-33.
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Scadivola, M., & Bereiter, C. (1983). The development of evaluative, diagnostic and remedial capabilities in children’s composing. In M. Martlew (Ed.), The psychology of written language: A developmental approach. London: Wiley.
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Thompson, C. (1990). “I made a mark”: The significance of talk in young children’s artistic development. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 5, 215-222.
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Thunder-McGuire, S. (1992). Fictive play in children’s artists’ books. Visual Arts Research, 16(1), 21-31.
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Thunder-McGuire, S. (1994). An inner critic in children’s artists’ bookmaking. Visual Arts Research, 20, [17] 51-61.
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About the Authors

Barbara Guzzetti is a professor of language and literacy in the College of Education, Arizona State University (Tempe AZ 85287-0311, USA). Her research interests include literacy as a social practice, gender and literacy, adolescent literacy, and learning with text. She can be reached by e-mail at guzzetti@asu.edu.

Cristal Marie Wooten is a instructor at the Phoenix Parks Recreation and Library Program in Phoenix Arizona (1202 N. 3rd Street, Phoenix AZ 85004, USA). She has bachelor of fine arts in art education with a emphasis in ceramics. She can be reached by e-mail at cristalmarie1@juno.com.

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Citation: Guzzetti, B.J., & Wooten, C.M. (2002, June). Children creating artists’ books: Integrating visual arts and language arts. Reading Online, 5(10). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=guzzetti2/index.html

Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted June 2002
© 2002 International Reading Association, Inc.   ISSN 1096-1232