The year I turned 21, I moved to a new community\u2014a new church\u2014a new friend group.<\/p>\n

And oddly enough, a new perspective on picture books.<\/p>\n

The perspective was one that distills easily into two sentences: \u201cYou\u2019re not alone! And you don\u2019t need to pretend that you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

After all\u2014what’s wrong with admitting you like picture books?<\/p>\n

I, for one, am here to tell you, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong at all!\u201d<\/p>\n

Do You Like Picture Books for the Memories?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

<\/p>\n

The picture books I like are a mixture of old and new\u2014books I read as a child and others I discovered after I was grown up.<\/p>\n

But the picture books I LOVE are pretty much exclusively those with memories attached.<\/p>\n

The stories my parents read over\u2014and over\u2014and over\u2014with patience I\u2019m only able to appreciate now that I\u2019m the one reading more often than the one listening.<\/p>\n

The stories that belonged specially to Thanksgiving or Christmas, and still pull up all the holiday vibes when I open them today.<\/p>\n

The stories that will always be a part of me, because they\u2019re an inseparable part of who I used to be.<\/p>\n

And for that reason\u2014even though it\u2019s an emotionally-charged, vulnerable reason\u2014I think it\u2019s healthy to admit that most of us have a soft spot in our hearts for at least some picture books.<\/p>\n

Do You Like Picture Books for the Lessons?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Let\u2019s face it! When you take a universal life-truth and put it into the language of a four-year-old, you either come out with a colossal mess\u2014or something approaching to genius.<\/p>\n

In the case of an enduring, time-honoured picture book, it\u2019s frequently the genius that wins out.<\/p>\n

There are some amazingly simple, amazingly potent lessons embodied in the 32 pages of standard picture books.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, as adults, we need that simplicity and potency even more than the child-audience for whom the stories were originally written. Which happens to be the second reason that I remain a fan of keeping picture books in your grown-up life.<\/p>\n

Do You Like Picture Books as an Art Form?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

And I\u2019m actually not referring to the illustrations when I say it!<\/p>\n

(Although picture book illustrations on their own almost deserve a post to themselves.)<\/p>\n

But as a literary art form, picture book texts are possibly one of the most demanding of all of genres. You have somewhere between 500 and 1000 words in which to tell a complete and compelling story.<\/p>\n

An academic writer, by contrast, may or may not have gotten halfway through their prologue in that space. A novelist has possibly not even introduced their main protagonist. Even a screenwriter is probably not much more than five minutes into their film.<\/p>\n

But the picture book author has succeeded in giving us an entire narrative folded into this infinitesimal space. A narrative that is not only complete, but often complex, and always (apparently) unhurried.<\/p>\n

A picture book is so short that every syllable counts\u2014but this restriction has a flip side. A picture book is so short that every word can be 100% intentional.<\/p>\n

Great picture book writing comes closer to poetry than to prose, even if the sentences never rhyme.<\/p>\n

And this is an aspect of picture books which a child may absorb unconsciously, but only an adult reader can truly appreciate and enjoy.<\/p>\n

If You Like Picture Books\u2014You\u2019re Not Alone!<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The group of healthy and accepting young adults that I met in my early twenties didn\u2019t teach me to like picture books. Picture books were something I had already known\u2014and loved\u2014for a couple of decades.<\/p>\n

What they did<\/em> teach me was that liking picture books was something we could all be open and unashamed about. Something no one was judging each other for. Something we could enjoy together.<\/p>\n

Maybe we\u2019re a minority, because we like picture books.<\/p>\n

Maybe we\u2019re the only group of friends who honestly enjoy sitting in a circle, in a room without a single child present, listening to a picture book being read out loud.<\/p>\n

As a matter of fact, I know that we\u2019re not.<\/p>\n

But even if we were, would it be a problem?<\/p>\n

When you have a whole room full of people doing something, you don\u2019t feel alone.<\/p>\n

Crazy, maybe.<\/p>\n

But not alone.<\/p>\n

And the truth of the matter is, you\u2019re not<\/em> alone, dear reader. You\u2019re never alone. And that\u2019s never more true than when you admit to liking picture books.<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like the series intro:<\/p>\n

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