Picture This and a Compliment

Last Friday I had the privilege of being a guest speaker for a few third grade classes in South Knoxville. A neighbor invited me to share a little about my work after her class read a book entitled What Do Illustrators Do? Before I knew it, all of the third grade teachers were eager to have me visit their classrooms as well! I found out later that the principle even snuck into the back of one room to hear about my work. I'm glad I didn't know before hand, because I was already a little bit nervous about presenting to the third graders. However, they proved to be a much better audience than my community college students.

I started by talking about how pictures work. And, I have an amazing secret tool: a picture book about picture books, Picture This by Molly Bang. It's really one of my all time favorite books. It continues to inspire and astonish me every time I pull it out. I was introduced to this book when getting my MFA, and I taught it to several college level art appreciation classes, so I was very curious to know how third graders would respond to it.

The book tells the story of Little Red Ridding Hood using simple shapes and colors, emphasizing the use of composition. I let the students guess the best possible shape, color, size, and placement for the varying elements in the story. It was great to hear the younger students' very raw unfiltered responses to changing up these simple visual elements. For example, when the trees are tilted instead of standing vertically... ooooh, when Little Red Ridding Hood, a red triangle, shrinks in size in the midst of the now very scary tilted black rectangles, the woods... ahhhh, and when the wolf's teeth are changed from black to white, popping off of the background even more dramatically.... squeals and laughter. It was great fun! What a testament to how powerfully pictures evoke emotion. Even if unable to explain what specifically they were moved by, even if it was subconscious, each student had a strong response to the changing four colors and very basic shapes.

After this exercise I read my "dummy" book, which is a mock-up book sent to publishing companies. The students were very curious about my work, and it was so much fun to explain the process of writing and illustrating my book, If Peaches Grew on Peachtree Street. I got lots of great questions, heard lots of their own ideas for books, and had several very encouraging compliments. However, there was one little girl sitting in the front row a little bit timid about the question she was about to ask me. With eyes wide and her mouth open in disbelief, she raised her hand and asked in a very soft wisper, "Did you illustrate all of the Dr. Seuss books?!?" I smiled and chuckled a little bit, and then said, "No. Did my book remind you of those books?" She nodded. Best compliment ever.

If Peaches Grew on Peachtree Street