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Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Ang INK Panel 2023: What Makes A Good Picture Book?

 

Ang INK will be having another group/organization exhibit and part of the event is a panel that discuss picture books. They have invited four industry thought leaders in the panel and it is an honor to be a part of it. It will be on Saturday, April 15, 2023 at 3PM at the UP Fine Arts. 

For this purpose, the Inkies sent guide questions ahead of time. 

1. What is your favorite picture book? It can be foreign or local. Share why you think it is the best. 

2. What is your definition of a good picture book? 

3. What is NOT a good picture book?

I am assigned to answer more questions as a school librarian. Such questions excite me because, there are so many trends and movements in Children's Literature these days. Ang INK is one group I am excited to share my ideas and opinions with. 

For starters, here are some of  my thoughts:

* A picture book is a visual art. Consider the pages of a book as a canvas in sequence. It moves and it can be moved both by the creators and the reader/viewer. The intended reader for this matter, is the child. A well crafted picture book becomes the child's experience in appreciating a visual art. The picture book is an art experience or aesthetics. I think it is also important to ask, if the creators' intended audience is the child, how then can they communicate art and aesthetics to this specific audience? Now here is an amazing thing, even adults find joy in reading picture books.

* My response to definition of GOOD and NOT GOOD would be the question: who gives value to the picture book, especially if this is considered as a visual art?

* Primarily so, it is important to use the principles and foundations in the visual art or visual literature as criteria, guide or a standard when creating and evaluating picture books, vis-a-vis, the reader's intent and context.

* While there are principles of visual literature, as guide in selecting, reviewing and acquiring picture books, we need to expose our children and ourselves to different kinds of picture books.

These are all for now. I am putting them up here so I can remember. I hope to see you there, friends!  









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