From Page to Screen: Using Videos to Enhance the Reading Experience

The importance of reading as a key skill for the 21st Century is a message that has been delivered to every parent who has a child in school these days. However, as many parents find, the process of helping a child learn to read is often a difficult, traumatic and rocky road. Once a child has begun to have reading problems, the most difficult job is to reinforce their self-image and to restore their self-confidence. To do so, children who are struggling or reluctant readers must be “turned on” to books and derive enough satisfaction from reading to become independent readers.

According to Lucy McCormick Calkins, who has been called by many “the Moses of reading and writing education,” the rocky road to reading must first begin by helping children to fall in love with books. To grow successful readers, “kids must be taught to reach for books and carry books with them and value books … this is best accomplished by giving kids stories they love to read.” Helping a child want to learn to read must first and always begin with the book itself – a book that is entertaining, engaging and interesting.

For over 50 years, Weston Woods Studios has been translating outstanding children’s literature into the audiovisual medium. Our videos, DVDs and audios are faithful reflections of the books on which they are based and have been designed to help children discover the riches that are trapped between the covers of the books in such a way as to motivate them to want to read for themselves.

We do this by scouring the marketplace for picture books deemed the best in children’s literature. With more than 5,000 children’s picture books published each year, book selection is the most daunting – but important – task we undertake. To find them, we comb reviews in respected trade publications and study books that have received special recognition such as the esteemed Caldecott Medal, given by the American Library Association to the Best Children’s Picture Book of the Year, or books designated Parents’ Choice Award winners. Teachers and librarians from all around the country let us know which books they like, and most importantly, which books children respond to. Books such as Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey, Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola, and Doctor De Soto by William Steig, are also chosen based on the universality, timelessness and value of their underlying message.

Once a book is chosen, our production team works hand-in-hand with the author and/or illustrator of the book itself. We brainstorm together to develop a storyboard that enhances and brings vividly to life the original message and intent of the story. And most importantly we work to make sure each production is a word-for-word adaptation of the original book, or consult with the creator(s) if changes must be made to original text. It is most important that each finished adaptation becomes as much as possible a “mirror image” of the book itself. We then also brainstorm with the book creator(s) in selecting the narrator and composer.