"Reading Images"

Literacy is often times thought to be the ability to read words and write sentences. However, literacy is a complex network of words, pictures, denotation, and connotation. The more people investigate other types of information related to reading and/or writing the more complex the definition of literacy becomes. The article "Reading Images" is a very good example of how images help shape, and can shape the meaning of the text to which they are associated. They can also inform the reader of how the author views a particular situation.

A good example of this was seen in the article about the picture of the bathtub and the accompanying sentence, "Every night I have my bath before I go to bed." A few things are implied. Parents bathe or have their child bathe each night before bed, children take baths not showers, children have toys and should play or need to play in order to take a bath. There is a washcloth hanging over the side which means that the child soaps herself/himself or is being soaped with a towel by hand. Because of the accompanying text, it makes it more difficult for the reader to be inventive (as mentioned in the article). Also, by exclusively showing the bath it limits the reader as to what might be in the bathroom or at least it is less likely that one reading this book out loud would think about what else was in the bathroom.

I also found it fascinating that the less "exciting" picture without words made it more possible for more inventive stories or stories that may not need to be grounded in reality. The picture looks fanciful so those reading may feel less constrained about what they would talk about.

Whereas images that are very closely linked to reality might make it harder for people to imagine different scenarios because there is a closer association to reality than with a drawing or picture that looks less like the "real" thing.