Librarians talk of informational literacy and digital literacy.  Educators and parents are concerned about financial literacy.  With the emphasis on STEM, there is increased reference to numeric or quantitative literacy.

Another important concerns is Transliteracy. It’s defined as “the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.”  (www.transliteracy.com). In an age of multiple devices and means of connecting with people and sharing information it is certainly a critical skill.

Those dealing with adults also discuss legal literacy and health literacy.  If you have ever tried reading a legal document or dealt with health care policies, the importance of these literacies cannot be denied.  Even college graduates find themselves unable to comprehend all the subtleties of how language is used in those areas.

I recognize the importance of all these literacies and support all that is being done to improve the ability of student and adults to master them.  However, as a member of ALA Committee on Literacy, I am ever mindful of what was once said at a committee meeting, “The house of literacy has many rooms, but the entrance is through text literacy.”

So we return to where we were in the mid-20^th century.  First and foremost, we need to be able to read text.   And the rate of adult illiteracy is shocking.

In the U.S., 14% of adults over 16 read at or below the 5^th grade level, and 29% read at the 8^th grade level. The implications are huge.  Among those with the lowest literacy rate, 49% live below the poverty level. A substantial portion of our prison population is composed of illiterates or low literates. (ProLiteracy)

Although school librarians are highly trained to teach the other literacies mentioned, they also are committed to creating lifelong learners and readers by instilling a love of reading.  The first Common Belief of the AASL Standards for the 21^st-Century Learner is Reading is a window to the world.  It then explains, “Reading is a foundational skill for learning, personal growth, and enjoyment.”

Students are taught to read in class.  For some, the skill is difficult and they are turned off.  This is the route to illiteracy and low literacy.  In the school library, surrounded by books at all levels, guided by a school librarian, adept at connecting a student with just the right book, students discover that reading can be fun.  We need more, not fewer school librarians.  The wealth of our nation depends on it.

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As an ASCD member, I get their monthly Education Update.  The lead in the July edition is called “When the Screen Goes Blank: Helping Students See What They Read.”  Research done by Jeffrey Wilhelm of Boise State University shows that poor readers see only the words in their heads.  They don’t form pictures which limits their understanding of text.  As librarians we know that reading is so much more than decoding.  It’s about making meaning (comprehension) and often reading is a means of making connection with the subject matter.  You can’t connect and certainly you can’t get new ideas if all you are seeing are words.

What is interesting about this study is one big cause of students’ inability to visualize what they are reading is they had little or no contact with picture books.  Sad and obviously damaging.  And it is one more reason why students desperately need to have elementary librarians in their schools.  I have noticed non-librarians tend to read picture books to kids differently.  Many of them read a page, then flash the picture.  They may ask a question or two about it, but there is a small disconnect.  When I was an elementary (and a children’s) librarian, I held the book with the spine in my palm, angling it so I could read the text while keeping the pictures in constant view. I practiced and became smooth at passing the book to my other hand without a break in the story to be able to read the facing page.  At all times students were focused on the pictures, not on me.

As a high school librarian, I can remember having fun with a purpose by reading picture books to my much more sophisticated students to set the tone for a unit.  Patricia Polacco’s Pink and Sayserved as a prelude to a study of Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage.  They needed both emotional and visual connections to that time period to aid in their comprehension of the story.

Kathy Barclay of the Rowland Reading Foundation says students need to read with all five senses, identifying what they smell and feel in addition to what they see. In writing my YA fantasy, Woven through Time, I found pictures to help me focus better on what I was envisioning in my brain.  I realize I was also smelling salt water when they neared the sea and the woodsy scent when my characters were in the forest. To fully “get” the story, students must become a part of it.

What techniques can you suggest to students (and teachers) to help poor readers at all levels learn to visualize what is happening on the printed page?

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