If our goal with children is to help them move towards a readerly life where they’re capable and confident in being able to read just about anything we put in front of them, then we have to look at the reality of what types of texts and literacy is expected out in the world. Visuals are an important part of that literacy, which means being able to read diagrams, charts, graphs, maps, photographs, and apply those same critical thinking skills as a reader to reading those visuals as we would want students and children to be able to apply in texts. That’s terrible.
When we begin to limit children’s access to certain types of texts such as highly visual informational texts, websites, reading online, graphic novels, picture books, we send an implicit message to children that some reading is more valuable than others and some readers are more valued than others.
If we really want children to be able to read just about anything, they need to read widely and they need support from more knowing others like parents and teachers in how to mediate those texts and understand them. That requires help. That requires support. We can’t just pretend that they won’t ever need to read those things.
With my own students I often use sports terms because they get the analogy there. If we only read one type of text, then we may become proficient readers in that type of text. But in order to be good all‑around readers, we have to read a little bit of everything. It’s as if you’re learning how to play basketball and you want to work on your jump shot. If you only practice your jump shot, you’ll probably have a great jump shot, but in order to be a good all‑around basketball player you have to learn how to dribble, how to pass, how to guard, how to develop teamwork skills, and how to work on your jump shot.
If we want kids to be truly literate and have strong literacy skills, they need to read a little bit of everything. And that includes the visual literacy pieces that are offered through illustrations, text features, and highly visual informational text, reading online, looking at video. They need to learn that critical literacy piece in all the ways we can define it.
