Too Tired? Too Anxious? Need More Time? We’ve got your back.
At this point in the semester you’ve developed your skills as a critical reader of children’s books,
so now it’s time to apply them as a children’s book critic.
For this assignment, choose a physical children’s picturebook (no ebooks or PDFs) that we have NOT read for class. Then, analyze the book by considering the following questions:
•Using the “artistic choices” from the “Children’s Picturebooks” lecture, consider how the author and illustrator (or author-illustrator) approached these different choices:
oSize of the book
oSize of the picture against the page oComposition of the objects on the page oUse, amount, and quality of color oStrength of line
oMedium used
oAvailability or cost
•How do these choices affect the experience of the book?
•Is there any one choice or set of choices that you would have made differently? Why?
•What are the goals of the book as a children’s book (help explore emotions and ideas? Transmit values or moral lessons? Develop familiarity and understanding with language or specific topic? Enable political or social reflections? Entertain?)? Is the book successful in achieving these goals? Why or why not?
•Who is the intended audience for this book and do you think it meets the needs of or is appropriate for this audience?
Once you have answered these questions for yourself, create a Reading Rainbow-style video presentation (5 minutes minimum) in which you present the book and your analysis of it. Your presentation video should go something like this:
• Introduce the book: give its title, author and illustrator, and show the cover
• Give a one to two sentence description of the book so your audience knows something about it, but don’t give too much away (the blurb on the back of the book is a good
model).
• Provide your analysis of the book based on the questions above. As you review the book,
feel free to show the audience sample pages of the book to illustrate your point.
• End your presentation with a comment about whether you would recommend this book,
and who you think it would be best suited for, as well as any other things about the
English 156 Children’s Literature
Bronx Community College of the City University of New York
book you’d like to share – did you love it, hate it, have a favorite part, cry at the end? Whatever stuck with you as a reader and reviewer.
A note about the presentation format: This assignment is designed as a five minute plus video presentation (presentations below the minimum cannot earn above a C). Most students prefer to sit in front of a camera and show the book, like in a story-time circle, but feel free to be creative. (Think of master presenter Levar Burton from Reading Rainbow.) However you present, you must include images of the book and audio and video of you presenting your review. This is an oral presentation, not an essay assignment, after all.
A note about recording: For free recording, I recommend Screencast-O-Matic (https:// screencast-o-matic.com/), but you may use whatever works best for you.
A note about submitting: You submit this assignment by sharing the link to your video on our “Reading Rainbow Oral Presentation” discussion forum. My strong recommendation for free video hosting is YouTube, which is completely free. I’ve also had students use Vimeo, Flipgrid, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, but you need to ensure the video remains “public” for the duration of the semester so that we have access to it. For that reason, I urge you to use YouTube.
If you have concerns about using technology for this assignment, please contact me and we will troubleshoot together.
Too Tired? Too Anxious? Need More Time? We’ve got your back.