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In addition to picture books and graphic novels, which have been used to both teach reading and to motivate reluctant readers, there are other visual materials that will do this as well: documentary photography books and pictorial works. These books are usually expensive, heavy and coffee-table sized. Eye-popping color photography of Michael Jordan on the basketball court, colorful graffiti in the cities of Berlin, London and New York, as well as gorgeous nature photography, entice children to pick up these books and take a further look. When they see a photograph of an animal or a place or a thing or a person that they don’t recognize, more times than not, they are motivated to read the captions and text that accompany the photograph.
Making Documentary Photography Books Work in the School Library
Look through the photographs. Many are of people, places and things unfamiliar to students --- subjects that many people will never see in person in their lifetimes. What pops out at you, the librarian, when you look through these photographs? Did they make you want to read the caption to learn more? Select a few photographs from the book and ask your students, “Did you know that…?” and hold the book up to show it to the class.
A standard 84” wooden bookcase from Brodart or Highsmith generally has room for 6 shelves. By adjusting the bookcase to hold five shelves, each shelf is tall enough to hold a larger-sized book.
I keep these books flat on the library tables and rotate them. I also display them standing up on bookcases, and I have created a special section of the library for them as well. The encyclopedia table, which once housed 3 collections of encyclopedias, now contains our photography books. We call it our “Fun Books” table because these titles, along with a few others, have proved to be especially exciting, interesting and motivating to our students.
These books are not much different from other books. If, during soliciting information from a student about what he or she would like to read, I am intuiting that the fewer words the better is where the reader’s advisory is going, I will take the student to my “Fun Books” table and start opening up books and flipping through the pages so the student can see all the photographs inside. Invariably, one of those photographs will jump out at the student and he or she will want to take a further look. When the student takes that book from your hands, your reader’s advisory, with that student, at that moment, has been successful.
This is what you want to see happen in the library: excitement over a book. These larger-sized photography books lend themselves very well to shared-viewing because of their size. Several students can hover over a large photograph at once. Turn your library tables into coffee tables for group gatherings.
This is a choice to make in preparing your collection development budget. In New York State, The Poulin Project (http://www.ducprogram.org/poulin.php), distributes art, photography and poetry books to libraries for free. The Strand Bookstore, also in New York, but now selling worldwide through its website, http://www.strandbooks.com/ , sells it’s books at half price, and Barnes & Noble and other large-chain bookstores always have a discounted book section which often sell very heavy, expensive art books at steep discounts.
Yes. If one book, no matter how expensive, is going to get that much use by being handled by numerous students over the course of several months, then that money was well-spent. It is more cost-effective to spend $50. on a single book then to spend $50. on five $10. books that may never circulate. If the book is used and enjoyed, it is money well-spent.
These books have limited print-runs and often go out of print quickly. If the book, previously very expensive, was over-printed, you can find it in the remainders section of Barnes & Noble, Borders and Amazon.com, often called “Bargain Books,” on Amazon’s website.
I don’t allow mine to circulate because they are expensive and because they serve a particular purpose in the library.
Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist are the two review sources I rely on the most. VOYA, another favorite review source, does not tend to review art and photography books unless they are published by a known children’s or young adult book publisher.
Sports, music, art, technology, robots, fashion, sneakers, album covers, hairstyles, the human body, tattoos, graffiti, human life in the womb, i.e., A Child is Born, animals, nature photography, photo essays such as photographs of the homeless, teenage runaways, natural disasters or 9/11.
Do not buy it. If after examining the book you find that it is perfect in every way for your students save for one photograph, which has the potential for controversy in the community you serve, I do not recommend purchasing the book. If you are ever asked to remove that book from your collection, it will be a large chunk of money that has gone down the drain. There has been some discussion about what to do with this one tiny aspect of a book that is questionable, such as putting a sticky over the picture or razoring out the page, but I strongly disagree with this form of censorship and believe it is best to simply not buy the book, than it is to buy the book and then damage the book. This is not a message we want to send to our students.
Yes, and in many ways. A science lesson can be enhanced by a large color photograph of a gorilla in its natural environment. The Jewish Holocaust can come alive for kids by using The Pictorial History of the Holocaust. Human fetal development is understood better by looking at the photographs by Lennart Nilsson in A Child is Born. Material wealth and poverty can be understood by looking at Hungry Planet and Material World.
Absolutely. Although I make mine reference, they are the perfect adjunct for a teacher’s lesson and another justification for the purchase of such expensive books.
Keywords:
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Documentary photography
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Photography
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Photographs
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Pictorial works
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Illustrated
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Chiefly illustrated
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Photography, artistic
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Nature photography
Subject Headings:
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Documentary photography
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Photography
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Nature photography
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Pictorial works
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Photography, Humorous
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Photography of Food
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Wildlife Photography
Dewey Decimal Classifications(s):
001-999; these books are found in every category
A Sampling of Documentary Photography Books
More About Documentary Photography Books for Reluctant Readers |
