Picture Book Month and Picture Books In A High School Library

Our Learning Support Teacher, perusing picture books in the library

As I am now working in a high school library, my collection development program is based on the needs of high school learners as well as their reading interest and developmental levels. There is the curriculum to refer to and I often use it side by side with my selection and acquisition procedures. Pedagogy and instructional philosophy are contexts I latch on as I grow and develop the collection.

So, if you visit our small library, you will find the required General Collection, Filipiniana, Reference Collection, AV and Online resources, and Fiction Collection. Over the years, I have acquired a good number of graphic novels and picture books too.

Yes, our high school library has them.

I think, picture books are important in our high school library because, we involve our students in the process of creating them. While many of them grew up reading picture books, knowing new titles and classic ones help them in creating their own. A few years back, our school project was the creation of picture books for K-3 readers. We called it Early Readers Online. We have started a good collection of stories made by our high school students. The stories in the collection are used by our students during their tutorials with K-1 students of Loma Elementary School. You can view them online through our school website. The link is here: The Beacon Academy: Community and Service.

Picture books are useful tools to teach a second language too. Our learning support teacher uses them to introduce Filipino to our foreign students. Illustrated story books about the Philippines add to context building in learning the Filipino language. The techniques and strategies to learn a new language are many. Using picture books is one of the strategies as it inspires the learner to create one.

Speaking of picture books, Picture Book Month is just around the corner. It is an international celebration of picture books and reading. It is an advocacy started by the sparkling, Dianne de Las Casas, award winning author and storyteller.

Back in 2013, I was part of the gang as one of its champions. Read more about it here: Picture Book Month 2013. This year, another Filipino creative made it to the list. Isabel "Pepper" Roxas is a 2016 Picture Book Month Champion! Head on to the Picture Book Month website! You will discover a wealth of resources to use in your library when you promote reading, picture books and literacy in general.