Reading the Visual

Today’s teachers need up-to-the-minute information to help their students make sense of the multimodal texts they encounter daily in and out of school. Reading the Visual is an essential introduction that focuses on what teachers should know about multimodal literacy and how to teach it. This engaging book provides theoretical, curricular, and pedagogical frameworks for teaching a wide-range of visual and multimodal texts, including historical fiction, picture books, advertisements, websites, comics, graphic novels, news reports, and film. Each unit of study presented contains suggestions for selecting cornerstone texts and visual images and launching the unit, as well as lesson plans, text sets, and analysis guides. These units are designed to be readily adapted to fit the needs of a variety of settings and grade levels.

Book Features:

• An accessible introduction to visual literacy and multimodality.
• Classroom strategies and demonstrations for analyzing and interpreting multimodal texts.
• Hands-on examples of units of study for ten types of multimodal texts.
• Resources for developing and adapting units, including suggested texts, analysis guides, and learning objectives.

Frank Serafini is an author, illustrator, photographer, educator, musician, and an associate professor of literacy education and children’s literature at Arizona State University. Visit his website at www.frankserafini.com. He received the 2021 International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA) Education Award.

“An important text, perhaps essential, for all educators who are interested in an expanded understanding of literacy.”

—TC Record

“Frank Serafini gets it. He knows that language and literacy were our original multi-modal forms. He knows that today they are as crucial as they have ever been.”
—From the Foreword by James Paul Gee, Arizona State University

“In Reading the Visual, Frank Serafini reveals for us the world we now live and learn in, one made equally of words and images, sounds and other sensory details. He makes a compelling argument for including these multimodalities in our curriculum and offers an important contribution to the conversation about reading and composing multiple texts across a range of media that the Common Core is inviting teachers at every grade level to have. This book combines a sound but engaging foundation in current theory (to satisfy our desire to learn) and excellent instructional strategies (to satisfy our need for practical solutions).
—Jim Burke, author of The English Teacher’s Companion and What’s the Big Idea?

“Those taking first steps into the area will find a path smoothed by a seductively simple style; those who are there already are offered constant insight and challenge. Reading the Visual is a book that will be valued by both kinds of reader.”
—Gunther Kress, professor of semiotics and education, Institute of Education, University of London

“Reading the Visual positions the analysis of visual images and multimodal ensembles as essential to language arts and literacy learning. Serafini’s book contributes important scholarship in understanding the theories behind this analysis and the significance of the visual in the many texts we encounter in and out of school settings.”
—Peggy Albers, Professor, College of Education, Georgia State University