Illustrations make a huge difference whether you’re writing a book for children or adults. They keep readers glued and help them to understand the story.
Illustrations – especially those found in children’s books – are important because they offer invaluable tools for learning, helping to establish fundamental literacy skills. In addition to this, they also spark joy and enrich the reading experience.
They Enhance the Story
In an illustrated children’s book, the illustrations are more than just decoration; they enhance the storyline. They help kids stay glued to the book and encourage them to keep reading. They learn how to read the pictures and understand what the words mean. This skill will prove useful to them in the future.
Communicating with your illustrator and being clear about your project vision is important. Ensure their style matches your story and the age group you are writing for. For example, there are better choices than a cartoony linework for a serious book about bullying.
Illustrations should match the text for the most effective results, not repeat it. For example, a child should not see the word “blue” in the text and then an illustration of a girl wearing blue.
They Help Children Learn to Read
Illustrations allow children to understand the story on a deeper level. They help them visualize the characters and their emotions, allowing them to create their connections with the story. Using illustrations as a tool for understanding the story allows children to engage on an auditory, visual, and cognitive level, creating a multi-sensory experience that will help them remember the story long after it has been read.
Illustration details deemed relevant by participants were retained in the Streamlined version of the book, while extraneous detail was removed. Previous research suggests that removing extraneous illustration details may reduce gaze shifts away from the text and reading comprehension.
Children’s illustrations can also teach inferencing skills, which involve making educated guesses about what will happen next or how a character feels. This is particularly important for beginning readers, as inferencing relies on prior knowledge, textual information, and visual information provided by illustrations.
They Help Children Develop Emotional Intelligence
When children are read to, illustrations allow them to see characters’ emotions through the visual representation. It helps them explore their feelings as they relate to the characters in the book and learn what it is like to empathize with others, important skills for growing up to be healthy and well-adjusted adults.
Illustrations can also help dissect written information and help explain things that words might not fully convey. This is especially helpful for informational books that require the reader to understand a complex concept.
Some may think that illustrations are only used in children’s books, but they can be found in various genres. For example, a book about science, a cookbook, or even self-help books can benefit from illustrations that elevate the content of the text. For this reason, creating and reading illustrated books is a great way to enhance the content of your next project.
They Help Children Develop Critical Listening Skills
Children are naturally captivated by illustrations, which turns them on to the storyline. The colorful pictures help them stay glued to the book, the first motivational factor that helps children develop reading habits.
Illustrations are used to complement the text and explain the story. However, in the last quarter of the 19th century, artistic giants Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway, and Randolph Caldecott gave birth to the picture storybook in which interdependent text and illustration cast a combined spell. The enchanting style of their nursery-song prints and the delicate garden colors of their work showcases harmonious linear composition and warm color.