(How) Can we read? "Looking books" 👀

January 23, 2024

I originally published this post on July 9, 2021. I’ve pretty drastically edited it and updated it here.

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What are “looking books?”

Once in awhile I mention titles I’ve termed “looking books.” I first wrote about them in a post about storing books and reading nooks, wherein I wrote:

I have trained my children to spend the time I use getting dressed and ready for work sitting on my bed with what I call “looking books.” Looking books are not ones that I am going to read — sometimes this means it is every Daniel Tiger, Minnie Mouse, or Disney franchise character book they have checked out of the library, more often it is photography or coffee table books I have provided for them — but rather ones they are going to page through and peruse themselves.

This has worked out beautifully over the years: I put my pants all the way on without having to stop for someone else’s needs, they ease into the day at their own pace in a comfortable spot and look at beautiful (sometimes inane) books. (I rotate these books monthly to keep it fresh or else this trick doesn’t work.) Win all around.

The idea of “looking books” is not just for grownups who would like to get dressed mostly uninterrupted: they are also fantastic preparation for “quiet time,” when you cross the Rubicon of no more naps; and for getting out of reading books that you don’t want to read.

Let me repeat that: use looking books to get out of reading books that you don’t want to read.

(To be clear, you should make an effort. This is not, like, a Get Out of Reading Aloud Ever card. Nor is it an excuse to escape your toddler, who is asking to read something for the 57th time in one day. No. If you want to raise a reader, you need to read to your kids — and your little one has a very real developmental need for that intense level of repetition, which you ignore at your own peril, and which I promise will pass. I mean the books that, if you have to read them one more time, you will fail to be your best self because, just as an example, the 13th Paw Patrol book you’ve read in the last two weeks is about to push you over the edge. Then you have permission to say, “I’m not going to read that one right now; that’s a looking book.”)

Looking books also have the benefit of introducing children to titles they likely otherwise wouldn’t be reading — in my experience, coffee table books aren’t ones that adults are clamoring to page through with kids, though I will say that I’ve been surprised at the conversations we’ve had by doing this very thing.

Looking books are an opportunity to expose young minds to images, art, places, pictures, even ideas that they probably wouldn’t encounter until they’re older (and maybe not even then).

Okay, but what else?

It’s worth thinking about the visual literacy that looking books engender. In the most recently updated version of Jim Trelease’s Read-Aloud Handbook: Eighth Edition, written by Cyndi Georgis in 2019 (I reviewed it in issue No. 12), for the first time there was an entire chapter dedicated to visual literacy and reading aloud.

On the topic of why it’s important for kids to understand visual images and be able to interpret their meaning, Georgis writes:

We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with visual images. Think about the images we encounter daily on television, through social media, at the grocery store, and on the internet. We express our feelings through emojis and use images in place of words when we send text messages. We are a visual society…

Today, with the number of symbols, infographics, maps, charts, and other visual communication kids experience, it is vital for them to be able to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from what they are seeing. This also includes illustrations they encounter in books. What better way to acquire and strengthen visual literacy skills than through pictures and conversation!

She also discusses the elements of a picture book, how to read aloud wordless books, and — my favorite — the skills required to read graphic novels, proving the point that visual literacy is an important element of not only being a reader but being a human living in today’s world.

Some examples

The following titles are a few of of our all-time favorite looking books — I do recommend all of them, but more importantly, I share them to give you an idea of what I am talking about, and what to look for as you seek out ones that might interest your own children.

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The Photo Ark: One Man's Quest to Document the World's Animals by Joel Sartore (2017)

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A Child's Book of Art: Great Pictures, First Words by Lucy Micklethwait (1993)

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Strong Is the New Pretty: A Celebration of Girls Being Themselves by Kate T. Parker (2017)

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GLORY: Magical Visions of Black Beauty by Kahran and Regis Bethencourt (2020)

I reviewed this in issue No. 24

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Nature Cross-sections by Richard Orr (1995)

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Women: The National Geographic Image Collection by National Geographic (2017)

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Timeless Journeys: Travels to the World's Legendary Places by National Geographic (2017)

I’ve used looking books in a variety of ways over the years, beyond simply buying myself time to get dressed with a minimum of task switching, frustration, and sometimes chaos. Two other examples come to mind:

• Over the years our swimming lesson times did not always align. I frequently had one child in the pool and the other next to me, waiting 15 or 30 minutes to swap places — not easy when said children were anywhere between the ages of 2-5yo (it took me that long to refuse to sign up for classes that don’t start and end at the same time). Enter looking books. Every week I’d bring a bag of titles I wasn’t super attached to — if they got a little beat up, dropped on the damp floor, even waterlogged, I didn’t care as long as they kept my little folks entertained. For a long time these were anything animal-related — Nat Geo Little Kids magazine issues, nonfiction children’s books, adult photography books on the lighter-weight side. Once I had my eye out for these at library sales, I found they are plentiful.

• When my eldest was turning 4yo, she was really into big cats. For her birthday, my husband and I went to Barnes & Noble and our local used bookstore and bought her a pile of looking books about big cats — most of which were not for children, but were rather photo-heavy nonfiction adult books about the lives of big cats. She adored them and paged through them for years.

I can imagine many other scenarios where you might introduce, and use, looking books in your own family’s reading life — these are merely instances in mine where they have come in handy.

National Geographic: a section of its own

For every obvious reason, National Geographic titles make great looking books. I have found the best place to procure them is the bargain section of Barnes & Noble — there are rows upon rows of overstock coffee table books on every subject one can imagine. (And I caution you: do not underestimate what your children might enjoy looking at — keep an open mind and they might surprise you.)

National Geographic is, of course, much more than a creator and publisher of wonderful, thick photography books — which brings me to the point that the magazine itself (to which we’ve had a subscription for the better part of 15 years) is the original, and possibly best, looking book ever created.

Case in point: when my youngest daughter was just 2yo, she became obsessed with the September 2018 issue, which featured a cover story about a young woman who at 21yo became the youngest person in the U.S. to undergo an experimental surgery to, essentially, replace her face. For weeks upon weeks my daughter carried this issue around the house and pored over the images, many of which were distressing if not outright gruesome.

(She found the magazine in the pile of back issues I keep on a bookshelf in my bedroom that she had to stand on a stool to access; I did not offer this one up for looking and worried — a lot at the time, actually — about allowing it, but I am not now and I doubt I ever will be a pre-reader of my children’s literature and I am pretty against prohibiting or taking away reading material except in some extreme cases. Some people do pre-read — good for them, not for me. I am certainly not vigilant about issues of a magazine about science, geography, and people, and was clearly no match for the natural inquisitiveness of a toddler).

One day when my dad came over, my daughter not only showed him all the photos in what she was by then calling “the face magazine” but told him the story of the woman’s surgery, which I had explained to her several times after fielding many questions — and it was in that moment that I realized the power of looking books. Looking books aren’t just something to keep my kids busy or help me escape certain reads — or, they’re not only that. They water the seeds of curiosity and grow the plant of discussion. They can be powerful — perhaps even life-changing — conduits of information, emotion, and learning.

Eventually, after an unfortunate encounter with some warm milk, the face magazine went to the great recycling bin in the sky, and I regret it quite a bit. It seems strange that I wish I had saved it for her baby box, but in retrospect she loved it just as much as (actually more than) her favorite board books I’ve tucked away in there. You never know what’s going to grab your child attention and not let go.

Looking books: try them!

Looking books don’t have to be photography books by any means — looking books can be whatever you say they are.

If you’re skeptical, try the library, of course. A good place to start is the children’s nonfiction section on animals — bring your kids along and encourage them to pick out a handful. Then find or ask about the photography section (779 is the magic Dewey Decimal number for books of photographs to look at, as opposed to photography technique).

If that’s just overwhelming, Nat Geo (I’m telling you!) has published a few always-reliable series for various ages that are a great jumping off point:

• For babies and toddlers, try the National Geographic Kids Look & Learn series — here’s a whole slew of them from Amazon. My kids adored these books when they were tiny.

• For preschoolers and early elementary, try the National Geographic First Big Book series — again, you can see how many there are on Amazon.

• For early elementary and beyond, try looking up National Geographic Kids and pick whatever looks interesting.

Another outstanding publisher is, of course, DK — if you’re a child of the late 80s/early 90s like me, you likely remember their Eyewitness series (Eyewitness: Mummy launched me into an obsession with Egypt that lasted the better part of my childhood). These can be had for a song on the used market. In more recent years, DK has teamed up with the Smithsonian to produce some of the best reference books (which make superb looking books) ever made:

• The ones that cover a single topic and are branded “visual encyclopedia” are excellent deep dives for kids of any age (beyond the ripping pages stage), like Dinosaurs: A Visual Encyclopedia.

• Don’t discount the ones that are aimed at a more adult audience — they are much thicker and heavier, they don’t necessarily include the words “visual encyclopedia” (though they are): my then-4yo spent hours with Gem: The Definitive Visual Guide, for no reason I could discern other than she is a curious child who was raised on beautiful looking books, and Gem is definitely one of them.

Try all kinds of different titles. Pick ones out yourself to share with your children, and invite them into the action of picking them out. The worst that can happen is that none of you like them. The best is that a whole new world of books — and a wider world in general — opens up for you all. Seems like a pretty good deal to me.

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Today’s takeaways, or some things to consider:

• Have your children ever experienced a “looking book?” Do you have another name for these kinds of titles in your home?

• Is there a way you could use looking books to your advantage? E.g., to keep small hands and minds busy when you are doing something else, to allow for choice in reading material without having to engage with the book yourself, etc.?

• In what ways are you currently supporting the development/refinement of your child’s visual literacy?

• What are some topics your child is interested in? Can you get some looking books on these topics?

• National Geographic is by no means the only visually interesting magazine out there — do you subscribe to any print magazines that you might share with your kids?

• Do you have any looking books in your home library? If not, where you could get a few to try out?

Thanks for reading today!
Sarah