It Works Best When I Read My Little Cousins Pictorial Book

By Alifia Afflatus

The 5 years old Arfan – who is my little cousin – is a story junkie. He won’t spend a single day without listening to a story. In extra busy days, this can burden me so I’ll pass the sacred job to my mom, or my dad, or... Arfan’s older brother. Arfan can’t yet fluently read, so it seems to be a typical exhilaration for him, when I let him walk inside the middle of nowhere, in my fictional scenario. At least that’s the only treat I can give him.

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If I refused to tell him stories, he would be eventually upset. Yes, upset.

Story-telling has been a long tradition in my small family. The 2 years old me used to be a shy little girl. So my mom introduced a stuffed Dora The Explorer to have a conversation and telling me stories. Before I could fluently read on the age of 3, I swallowed tonnes of stories on a regular basis. On primary school, I joined some story-telling competitions and grabbed some awards.

Personally, stories helped me nurture and grow. Generally, I believe stories have been helping millions of children outside to understand life and the world.

Even though considering myself shy, I guess I’m a really good story-teller to my little cousins. I have thousands of voices for different characters, whether they’re characters of my own or the ones I pick from books written by someone else.

Nowadays, if I tell Arfan merely short stories, he’d ask me to extend, and when I told him my mouth was fatigued, he relieved me and said, “sister, it’s called a mouth exercise, you know? It’s good for your mouth!”

As the response of our strengthened family tradition, I read some essays to understand more about the relation of storybooks and children, and here’s how it works.

Book vs Movies

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Child is often attributed to cartoon movies, as well as cartoon shows normally viewed as shows for children (surprisingly, lots of animated movies are adult stories packaged in kid-styled animations. Disney is one of the companies you can take example from. Who knows if it’s a part of the agenda or if society misnomers them as kid shows, this article may help you be aware).

It is noticeable that since Youtube is on its era, animators began producing edutainment and widespreading them in thousands of Youtube channels – mentioning the popular ones such as Pinkfong, Kids TV, Dr. Binocs, Nussa Official, or my pick – Islamic Stories for Kids. Shows can simply be selected in a few clicks on your mobile.

            

Teaching religious studies, moral stories, science, even foreign languages is now easier than the blink of an eye. Movies let children getting some visual experiences to expand their understanding of knowledge, supported by engaging back sounds. The short-term effects of animated shows including children get more interested in the topics presented. Studies attest it grows language acquisition and cognitive development, which admittedly doesn’t limit to movie! Books and direct communication are nay effective in growing cognitive and linguistic.

Therefore, if a show was intended to audiovisualize an animal life cycle, or vlogging a tour around holy sites in Mecca or Jerusalem – a child who might have problem imagining what they’re taught about, would be positively assisted on their learning process.

However, there’s another side of books which movie-addicts should consider.

         

Zooming out of vaster range of perspective, adults often debate over which gives you better experience; books or movies. As if more materials and time are needed on movie-making, it becomes technically harder than writing a book. But it is also brutally indisputable that no matter how movies are trying to maximize its attraction, a book still offers its readers a wider state of freedom, a mind-training to imagine, explore, and reflect.

            

Reading a book is empowering yourself. You may be a chubby girl on the street, or tan skinned Asian living in a small house (or it’s actually myself), or someone who can’t yet realize a teleportation machine.

It’s pretty much bitter to think that you can’t be like Jennifer Lawrence or Emma Watson. Your physical features are far different. Later, you’re wondering why the movie version of your Ready Player One or Maze Runner choose unrealistically gorgeous actress to play the characters you imagine you are. To worsen your anecdoche-styled complain, you are crooning inside why your imaginations are limited to the scenes and conversations recorded in the movie!

            

But a book – it’s ushering you to an entirely new joy. You can extend the length of the story, you can imagine yourself as the character, you can make your sound speaks through the dialogs. You basically are building your own set of movie inside your head.

            

This – too – is applicable to children. They’re just in the very beginning, at least when compared to us adults. Their ability to think is the most prominent for foregoing usages such as cognitive use, communication, self-awareness, and sowing principles. A book lets children bravery coming out to initiate their own imagination, personalizing a story with their own visualization, and steep into the story they read (or listen to) better than animated movies.

            

Yes, they are engaging and appalling. But we didn’t mention the less-positive long-term effects, did we? Since it has dynamic visual, it demands children’s brain to move rapidly in order to fathoming, yet it doesn’t let them to digest the visual and elaborate them onto something that is not played in the scene. Quick and dynamic visual – for that matter – doesn’t fit children. In some cases, animated movies suggest violent and aggressive act also.

Why I’m Fond of Pictorial Book

Older children and adults will normally agree that books without pictures are yet enjoyable. I began reading relatively thick novellas on the age of 9. But most children aged 4 (if they could already read) until around 8, are still on process of relating the word context. Unfamiliar vocabularies may give elementary readers additional job, and it turns out to be the reason why some kids choose not to be avid to pieces of literatures.

Presumably, static pictures assist them in understanding the context of a word. It still activates their skill of thinking, without leaving them understanding the blank concept of a story.

Lately, I read a report written by researcher Youki Terada back on 8 of June in Edutopia, and my perspective got clearer a little bit afterward. The report was quite resonating with the reason why reading tradition is peacefully continued in my family.

As if the non-pictorial book gets too hard to understand contextually to early readers, and dynamic visuals (a.k.a animations) give their brain maximum space to nurture, pictorial book is in between. Still, there are many alternatives to deliver stories to children. Utilization of props like stuffed animals or even – the simplest, finger puppets – or setting a play-pretend time, are scintillating moments they also remarkably need to try. []