PICTURE THIS -
if you can, the slow downward slide of fewer picture books being published. Apparently, 4 year olds are now being pushed to read chapter books with little or no pictures. What is up with that?
I used to lose myself in the pictures of books, to notice the actions, the colors, the dipictions, and the wonder of it all. Whatever are doing to our children - that at 4,5, 6 and beyond, that they no longer are allowed by the parents to savor and linger over picture books? What are you doing to the creativity, imagination, and being able to see and observe and to notice? Please, you are robbing your children of play and wonderment all in the name of getting them into the right preschool, and eventually into Harvard or so you think. Let them read both. Let them just be saturated by the illustrations, the artistry, the beauty, the movement. They need that as much as content and information in their life. Let your children be children, well-rounded, with active imaginations, creative, and able to notice and appreciate beauty.
I am over 50 and I still can lose myself in a picture book. It is good for the soul, which ought not to be neglected in the hurry and flurry of getting your child into the right and proper schools and ahead of the "game". Foster the goodness and the beauty of your child's soul as well their intellect. You will never regret it ever.