The Book With No Pictures: A Reader’s Power

The Book With No Pictures is an intriguing name and concept for a children’s book. Or at least it seemed that way to me at first when an article on the subject caught my eye. The idea was novel and the kids certainly responded positively.

Still, something nagged at me as I watched a clip of B.J. Novak reading his book, The Book With No Pictures, to children in grades K-2 at a Long Island charter school.

Was it the book that generated the children’s laughter? Or was it Novak’s performance? Could an average parent reproduce the experience at home?

Every question that came to mind raised further questions. For instance, a child might laugh at a parent’s reading of the book because the child remembered the event in school: the time that B.J. Novak made a whole lot of children get totally goofy. The memory would be a good one that in and of itself make a child get completely silly.

But what would happen if the child never heard of the book or the author and a parent lacking histrionic ability read this book to his child for the first time ever? Would the child laugh at the nonsense syllables in spite of a parent’s uninspired reading? Or would he find the experience altogether lacking.

I mean, if your parent isn’t an exciting reader, what you’ve got left are the illustrations, right?

I know that when I was a child, it was hard to wait for the next page with an illustration, even though my mother served as an adequate bedtime story reader. I would ask her to wait and flip a few pages forward to see the next picture. I’d want to talk about it and my mother would have to decide whether to break the flow of her reading to allow me the freedom to go off on a tangent or whether to tell me to wait until we read the relevant, accompanying and likely revelatory text.

As a writer, I am a person in love with sounds and words, and yet as a child, I always wanted to see the pictures. I have to assume this is a natural and universal desire for most children.

Another thought I had, as I watched that clip, was about something I think about as the “teacher persona.” One day I will blog about this. But for now, let’s just say that good teachers are exciting. They make the class come alive. They bring their personae to bear on the lessons they teach. It is this ability that is the difference between a good teacher and a teacher who is less than stellar (I don’t like to say “bad teacher” but yeah, that’s what I mean, even if it’s not PC).

B.J. Novak would make a good teacher. He infuses his reading with his personality. It is his personality that is making the reading hilarious and not so much the concept of a book with no pictures or the humor of nonsense syllables. That is to say that he would make a good teacher but not a GREAT teacher.

They’re So Past It

That’s because he doesn’t know when to stop. From my point of view, those kids are beyond relating to sounds. They are now overexcited. Which is okay. It’s fine for kids to get slap-happy and silly.

But try to get them to come down from this highly excited state to one in which it is possible to learn. It would be impossible. The kids would just look at each other and keep laughing. You won’t be able to get them back on track.

More than likely, their nervous systems will be so overwhelmed that eventually they’ll become cross and tired and cranky. And the teacher or parent will know that these are children who need to sleep it off. Yet sleep will come hard.

There will be crying.

Can you see it—see what I see happening with this book? (I would love to have been a fly on the wall to see what happened after the reading in the above clip just to see if I’m right)

Buy The Book With No Pictures: With A Caveat

I don’t say don’t buy The Book With No Pictures. I don’t say the concept doesn’t work. But I would say that if you are a parent with a flair for reading, keep things only moderately exciting for your young audience, especially if your reading is meant to lull your child to sleep. Moderate your tone, dim down the gleam in your eye, something I found a bit disturbing about Novak in the clip.

Novak’s got a great thing going on with the kids, but in the end, he’s not thinking of them, but of promoting his book. You don’t need an out-of-control, very young audience, trust me on that. And you don’t have to worry about B.J. Novak’s book sales.

Remember you heard it here: a great reader can control his audience and bring them exactly where he wants them. And that is an awesome power. One that must never be abused.