Graphic Texts: Literacy Enhancing Tools in Early Childhood

The message of the book is straightforward and easy to apply: it derives from the interweaving of long years of field work with a solid theoretical background. The practice advocated presents children with the opportunity to confront contents and situations which are only too often considered inaccessible for them. The abundant examples presented show that when provided with an adequate toolkit composed of graphic texts, children are inherently motivated by the challenges surrounding them and can make the most out of them as valuable learning opportunities. Drawings, icons, photographs, maps and calendars are incorporated into the tool-kit while they are being used in circumstances in which they are required: children appropriate them while exposed to their use and experience their affordances. Children realize how the graphic texts empower their performance.
The fact that this toolkit is multimodal (involves several sensory modalities) implies that those for whom language is not the most readily available means of communication and processing are not discriminated against: on the one hand, it facilitates conceptualization and its expression by alternative means, and on the other it supports both the comprehension and production of verbal language.

Eva Teubal is Professor Emerita of Early Childhood Education at the David Yellin Academic College of Education, Jerusalem.