Communication Function In Children's Picture Books

Picture books are main research topic in this dissertation. By the study of communication function of picture book, the dissertation paid more attention on the values of books to contemporary children in multimedia environment. The relationship between media and children's development is an important research field in communication theories. With the fast development and improvement of media technology, mew media have challenged and changed the old media greatly. In the past 100 years, Books experienced the changes from dominant media to support media and have to face the challenges from new media. New media, such as newspaper, broadcasting, television, PC, Internet and mobile phone, use their different communication methods and modes to build a complicated multimedia environment and have different way to deliver and receive information. Their ways to choose, express and emphasis information are also very different. Because of low efficiency to receive information and pay for reading, books are more and more ignored by contemporary children in the competitions with other fungible media. All these changes brought us the thoughts about the situation of books and their effective connection with Children.There are quite different kinds of books suitable for children's reading. The main reasons for choosing pictures book as the research topic are as the following three points: Firstly, from the narrative construction, picture books are convenient for children's reading with the narration of both pictures and words, which is helpful for my research on children's reading behavior development and the different influence from picture and words under the same narrative background. Secondly considering the narrative contents, most of picture books talk about the traditional stories which are quite also delivered by parents, TV or broadcasting and brought children the background to understand the pictures. In that case, the reading affection study is under a multimedia environment and creates the chance to conduct the research about the difference channels and children's information receive. As for the situation of picture books industry, there are big differences between China and west countries. The research about picture book marketing theories and practical method is useful to provide some thoughts on the developing way of Chinese children's book industry.As a special kind of children's books, picture books are identified as"the books which narrate the story by the connection of verbal and visual, and the pictures appear in each pages and work as necessary tool to support the story narration". From the identification we could conclude that the two narrative elements, picture and word, have different situation for the story building: picture works as the main tool and use the relationship between verbal and visual to develop plot and express meanings. Although the readership of picture books is not limited to children, picture books are more referred as children's reading materials in this dissertation.For a more clear identification of picture book, this dissertation has discussed the distinction between picture book and other similar children's books as illustrated book, picture-story book, comic book and cartoon book. The dissertation discussed their differences at four different levels: the narrative subject, the relationship between verbal and visual, the relationship between pictures, and the independence of pictures. On the basis of these four levels discussion, the essential of picture book are identified as"pictures in picture book have logic relationship between each other and could contribute to meaning-building without words". Different kinds of picture book have different relationship between pictures and words but all picture book have the following four characteristics: multi-channel narrative construction, open structure, inner decoded and extended reading function to"extra-book-reading".Under the framework of the relationship study of media and children's development, the dissertation discussed the communication function of picture books on the basis of three different levels: the first level is about the relationship between the communication of public social experiences and children's media choosing in the multimedia environment; the second level is about the relationship between children's reading behavior and their cognitive development;Third level is about the current situation of Children's book publishing industry in China; These three levels support each other within the fields of children, social and media and provided instruction for communication function study of picture books.The dissertation started research from the communication meaning study of picture book in the media environment. Following the discuss of the communication of public social experiences and children's media contact, this dissertation paid attention to the media contact difference to children under the multimedia environment. Books have changed their characteristics from simplex knowledge carrier to the concurrent media of information and knowledge. These changes have also brought the influence on the book publishing strategy, its narrative construction and content structure. Changes are not only happened in books but also in young readers. They have more and more new media to choose and more and more prefer to use new media. Is there any difference between the using of different media and what is their different influence to children's development? Started the research from different characteristics of different media, as content symbols, the interactive ways, the efficiencies of information acquisition, the dissertation pointed out the differences between different media contact and emphasis that difference could brought different influence to children's socialization and cognitive development. Children's developments have three levels: biology development, cognitive development and socialization development. Children's socialization achieved by the interactive between children and their social environment and infected by their personal conditions as sexual, age, talent, characteristics and physique.The study of children's reading behavior and their cognitive development started from the nurture of children. Children are independent human beings with their own dignity and rights. Educator should understand children's immature state and respect it. Picture books exhibit this immature children's worlds which children could cognized and show the abundance and unlimited by their logic construction. About the reading behavior study, this dissertation discussed children's understanding of the essential to reading at first and pointed out the specific characteristics of children's reading behavior and their developing process. The dissertation emphasis that the more important meanings for early reading capability development is to help children find good entering way to flute reading and get many experience from different reading methods.The process for children to read words and pictures is different. For children's early development of reading behavior, we need to help them build the experience of symbols decoding of pictures and words. The essential of reading education is to provide the guide line to children's many different reading experience.The dissertation also talked about different influence elements on children's reading study and the same basic needs to the acquisition of reading capability. Besides the language elements, English and Chinese, it also discussed the influences from different training methods and found that young readers'capability of reading and meaning acquisition are positive effected by the word-and-picture reading training. Picture book reading, as the climbing before walking, is an very necessory foundation for children's early reading study.During the early period of children's socialization, they did not have standard reference and their judge capability is very limited. In their early start of biology and psychology development children accepted all information and experience which received from different media with different influences. Although different influences could be brought from different media brought, different media all worked as important channel for children to get public social experiences. The capability to understand the social meanings is the mark to judge children's growing. Different from other media, books are addressed as the core channel to deliver social experience. But as we know, more and more children did not like reading. How to help young children to decode the social meanings from book reading is a challenge task of the competition between books and the other media. From the point of multimedia competition environment and the situation of publishing industry, this dissertation discussed both the historic needs and the current management and development situation of picture book publishing.Picture books have a long development history. Meaning symbols had been used to express meanings in different human being's culture before the appearance of modern publishing industry. In different language and culture environment, the level to using no-words (as pictures) as the meaning carriers to express meanings is different, which also brought the different publishing and reading culture. Picture book publishing industry in China is currently on the first stage of development. For further development, more research needed to be given to support the new titles building and end-users satisfaction. This dissertation talked about the specialization of children's publishing industry and the classification standard of children's book market. Some thoughts also are suitable for the development of publishing industry in China. In one word, this dissertation discussed the communication function of picture book from the research of children's development and media contacting in the contemporary multimedia environment. On the basis of analysis of media influences to children's development, this dissertation point out the important meanings of book reading to the development of children, and emphasis the media educational function. It also brought the needs analysis for the specialization development of picture books under the publishing industrialization environment in China. All these thoughts would benefit the theories development of children education, media research and children's book publishing industry.