You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Three-and-a-half-year-old Ryan regards me soberly. He sits carefully on the edge of the couch, or looks with disinterest bordering on disdain at the playroom toys and me. What to do with this inhibited and serious little boy, who I know, from his parents, is also imperious, fearful, and lonely? When he is ready to leave, he stands by the office door, too listless to even turn the knob. I introduce There's a Nightmare in My Closet (Mayer, 1968). Ryan listens intently and studies each page. He stops me at a page where the child protagonist shoots the monster nightmare. “That's mean, right?” Ryan asks me, worriedly. “It could be,” I respond with interest. And we are off and running. Now he knows that I know about meanness and that we can talk about it. He asks to hear the book again immediately, and again for the next ten sessions. He sometimes jumps up as I read it, excited by recognition. At other times he leans into me, feeling close, as we are knowing together about aggression and fear and the difficult question of whether it is “mean” to shoot. This simple and marvelous picture book defined a landscape we could explore together, and a language in which to do it. Ryan's later play with puppets and dolls was richer and more complex as he developed the themes of his first sessions, but Nightmare remained important, a landmark of the place where we jumped in.
Inside Picture Books, by Ellen Handler Spitz (1999), opens with many examples of adults recalling the tremendous importance of picture books read to them as children. Why are these books important to us, and how do they work in us? In this thoughtful and original work, Spitz considers these questions from social, aesthetic, moral, and psychological perspectives. She organizes her discussion of familiar books for young children into