Created by Jason Perlman and Brin Lukens for DreamWorksTV, "Draw My Dream" features a child telling a story ("my dream") and the hands of artist Jenny Fine using colored pencils to give the narration visual form. These drawings are animated and given sound effects. Some of the older children seem too conscious of the fact that they are being given a moment of video fame. The younger ones, however, can't help themselves from moving their bodies as part of the storytelling. These examples of natural multimodal play bursting through are beautiful to see, and highly entertaining. Here are my two favorites:

"Bull with Wings on a Kissing Spree"

 "Extreme Candy House"

I think that it is unfortunate, however, that the children are shown only in the role of storyteller. The visualization and drawing is left up to a professional adult illustrator. A consequence of this is that my own children, who thoroughly enjoyed the videos, tried telling their own stories afterward, but they did not pick up a pencil to draw them themselves. They didn't say the point out loud, but I think that they were wishing that they could have a similar team of adults working for them and also "be on TV." 

Graphic narrative play is different in that the child participates in giving form to "things that they want to tell." When the adult draws something that "is not right," the child will point this out, and either give a verbal correction or actually take the drawing tool out of the adult's hand to show a "correct" version. The conversation between child and adult that goes along with this often encourages the child to strive to communicate something that is challenging to explain or show. 

The process gives the child a feeling of being in control and listened to without granting celebrity. I would love to see DreamWorks TV, with all of its resources, show us what can happen when children are allowed access to the paper and pencils and the adult is allowed to ask questions. The result might not be as entertaining, but it would be more meaningful and inspiring.
  



  

We commonly think of reading and writing as a pair, and we understand "being literate" as having the skill to do both. At a time when our interest in "visual literacy" is going up and up, it is odd that we are not more concerned about drawing. It seems that writers of English language books were most concerned about drawing at the start of the twentieth century. Why? Because industrialization required clear visual communication for manufacturing needs. Books published around that time had titles like Machine Drawing and Design for Beginners (1908) and Modern Technical Drawing (1913). Drawing was part of understanding and managing a changing world. There is some evidence that we are renewing our appreciation for drawing as tool for learning and communication. This is a topic for another post, but for now I'd just like us to think about how writing practice affects our ability to read. Drawing practice, I believe, affects our ability to understand, interpret, and appreciate images.

Google Ngram Viewer enables searches of Google Books for specific phrases. A search for "visual literacy" shows zero hits until about 1960. From there, usage has trended steadily upward. This graph ends at 2008, but I think that we can assume that the upward trend is continuing.