What do you prefer to read to children? Fiction picture books, nonfiction, poetry or... all of them? And how about a mix of some of these genres?Poetic Nonfiction Picture Books, a term coined by Ted Kesler (2017), is a hybrid genre of children's literature that blends poetry or poetic qualities and expository writing, expressing an artful level of craft, with provocative effects on readers. One example, the book Voices of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement by Carole Boston Weatherford won awards across genres, including awards for nonfiction, picture book, and illustration (Kesler, 2017). The fact that several blended genre books have recently won awards across genres has caused researchers like Kesler to consider the benefits of genre blended books.
A good reason to explore these genre blended books is to let children experience how meaning resonates through the synergy of poetry or poetic qualities, prose, illustrations, and design (Kesler, 2017). According to Sipe (1998), picture books are multimodal because they include three primary modes for constructing meaning: images, design elements, and written language. When they also blend poetry or poetic qualities with expository writing, they became a more demanding kind of reading. These blends can be both challenging and also engaging for children.
While reading, there are many processes that happen at the same time. As readers, cues within the book tell us what kind of text we are going to find. A favorable environment to motivate reading as well as writing has another vital ingredient: speech. Dialogue between teacher and student (or parents/caregivers and children) and interchange among students can foster growth and develop insights into the text (Rosenblatt, 1994). Additionally, as we open a book, we usually approach our reading from one of two main stances, the efferent and aesthetic (Rosenblatt, 1994). With the efferent reading approach, we aim to extract information, facts, and details from the text, while with the aesthetic approach, our reading is like a dive into the text, letting thoughts and emotions interact with the content. Usually, there is one stance that is dominant, but we always use both of the main approaches together while reading (Rosenblatt, 1994).
Genre blended books provide opportunities for analysis of genre cues, discussion of the text, and movement between efferent and aesthetic stances as children navigate multiple layers of information to understand the text. Poetic nonfiction picture books provide opportunities to read outstanding, complex writing that is more consistent with texts that our students will continue to experience in the world (Kesler, 2017).
Rosenblatt, states that the teaching of reading and writing at any developmental level should have as its first concern the creation of environments and activities in which students are motivated and encouraged to draw on their own resources to make "live" meanings (Rosenblatt, 1994). Both parents and educators can enact Rosenblatt's advice through genre blended books.
In the Community Literacy Center's activities such as Book to Art, Write Free, and tutoring, children are encouraged to share their interpretations of stories and interact with their peers, bringing their perceptions and view of the world to the conversation. This interaction with other children and with the book's content contributes to opening their horizons by getting acquainted with a variety of ways of thinking, feeling, and reasoning.
Kesler, T. (2017). Celebrating Poetic Nonfiction Picture Books in Classroom. In: Integrating Children´s Literature. The Reading Teacher, Vol. 70, Nº 5, pp. 619-628.
Rosemblatt, L. (1994). The Transactional Theory of Reading and Writing. In: Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading. Newark, PE: International Reading Association.
Photo: Tookapic, from Pexels.
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