My online Course - Pictures of Youth

Hello John!
My course is about picture books for kids.
I think I'll have mercy and won't paste here all what I've written about the course because it'll be too long for you to read, yet too boring.

So the course started by introducing some examples of picture books. It tackled the idea that many picture book authors love ambiguities – they love unsettling, often in the visual part of the book, the clear-cut meanings that the texts appear to offer. And by doing so, they play with our interpretations of the stories.
It, then, proposed some definitions to picture books. And here’s my favorite: “The unique character of picture books as an art form is based on a combination of two levels of communication, the visual and the verbal.”
I also passed some quizzes that aimed to test my general knowledge of (the names they give to papers inside the picture book): the double spread, the end papers, the gutter, etc.
We then discussed the importance of a picture book, and how it helps creating multiliterate individuals because they’re able to blend or switch quickly between reading text and reading image. And it, then, opened a new topic about how both the visual and the verbal material are complementary. They’re speaking together, at the same time, but they might be telling different stories. They showed us examples of picture books that either have predominantly visual narratives or complementary/ enhancing relationships between words and pictures.
There’s a quote I read in an article in this course that says: “The closer words and images come to filling each other’s gaps, the more passive is the reader’s role since there is little left to the imagination.”

That's it for today !
Thank you for reading though !

I think it's a very interesting subject.

What are your feelings on the way the British education system introduces the subject. Are there differencies to what you are used to?

The fact the course is in English may not be so strange to you as to the French students but what are your views on it?

Is it an interesting way to work on your English?

I think it's good. Till now there is nothing different than what I was used to. The only thing is that sometimes I get bored from the online courses as they're not interactive - although we have the discussions, etc.- but I prefer normal classes in general. I love to watch people trying to express themselves hihi.
And regarding my opinion about the online courses as an interesting way to work on my English: yes it is. My mom "forced" us to watch English series when we were kids like : Lost, prison break AND HELL'S KITCHENNN! haha. So it helped us a lot. Right now I think it'll be cool to work on it in a more "academic" way I guess.

Hagar,

I've chosen the same subject of you !!!

This week, I'm starting the 2 weeks of the course about comics !
I'm looking forward to learn it !

See you Hagar

Yvaaa ! hahaha that's so cute hehe
Yes me too! I'm looking forward to knowing more about comics because I LOVE IT !
See you tomorrow !

Hello John! I was a bit late because I’ve been sick for 2 weeks.

So this week I’m going to tell you more about Comics.
First of all I came across a cool definition of comics : “ Comics are juxtaposed pictorial and other images in a deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.”
Comics have these elements that characterize them :
• Dominance of visual over verbal information
• Several pictures
• Sequentiality
• Speech and thought bubbles
• Conventional symbols
• Drawing style

We also learned that comics are a medium, not a genre, nor a style. That means that they are recognizable because of the way they tell stories, not because of the type of stories they tell, nor because of their aesthetics.
We also learned a “technical” word that is related to comics which is: The Closure. It’s the creative mental operation that a comics reader makes when going from panel to panel. It’s what the reader does to piece together the narrative from the sequence of panels.

So that's it for today ! hihi

Hope that you're feeling better Hagar, Angouleme is the French capital for comics.