Introduction
The book that I selected as the basis for bibliotherapy is “Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell.” The main rationale for choosing this book was the fact that it represented a well-trodden and quite problematic theme in an engaging and easy to understand way. Namely, the problem of sex-based segregation in society, as well as the exploration of the problem’s roots, is offered in a rather palatable and uniquely engaging way.
Tanya Lee Stone incorporates peculiar design choices and elaborate use of words to describe the issue in a way that would capture children’s attention. The picture book allows attracting the viewers’ attention with its original drawing style, whereas the use of font type and size helps to draw the reader’s attention to important issues and boost their enthusiasm for reading as a crucial part of their early development.
Main body
The importance of early childhood development has been proven to be quite high due to the speed at which children absorb new knowledge and the basis that it provides for future learning. Research points to the fact that boosting early childhood development entails better cognitive functioning in adolescence and adulthood, allowing a child to transfer from one developmental stage to another at a natural pace. Therefore, studying the role s that different devices play in advancing early childhood development is necessary.
Bibliotherapy is commonly viewed as an innovative tool for encouraging early childhood development. Research indicates that the adoption of bibliotherapy has a multitude of positive effects on young children, including the extent of them gaining skills according to their current developmental stage, such as critical thinking for four-year-olds. Therefore, applying the specified device to the selected teaching strategy to help children in gaining literacy skills and cognitive abilities is essential.
There are a plethora of children’s books that provide crucial material for learning, leading to the development of both children’s literacy and their understanding of key social issues, including the problems of gender. However, the book “Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell” by Tanya Lee Stone represents a particularly important piece with which children should familiarize themselves. The specified book features a range of essential opportunities for young students to develop crucial literacy skills, at the same time exploring the problems of gender stereotypes.
The book has a plethora of important lessons concerning gender stereotypes and the need to break them in order to achieve equality. Focusing on the restrictions that women faced a couple of centuries ago, the book convinces children that they can overcome social stereotypes and prove themselves as competent and successful. Namely, the book pays very close attention to the aspect of social constraints that prevent women from stepping outside of the boundaries defined by gender stereotypes.
The book introduces children to ethical concerns that the presence of gender stereotypes and sex segregation causes. For example, the book puts emphasis on the reason for the lead character to become a doctor. By explaining that some women would rather face the examination by a woman, the author details an important cultural issue lying at the basis of the fight for women’s rights. The focus on the issue of justice, in turn, will entice young learners and likely encourage them to read more about the challenges faced by the lead character. As a result, children will gain literacy skills in a natural progression.
The fact that the book features several important learning points for young children in terms of vocabulary and the development of a better understanding of complex words should also be mentioned. For example, “Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors” offers its readers the following passage to consider: “A girl who climbed up to her room and stretched out as far as possible with a spyglass to see what was happening on the other side of town” (Stone 3). The specified part of the text includes the basic vocabulary that allows young learners to get the general meaning of the passage, watt eh same time guessing the meaning of less familiar words such as “climbed,”
In order to understand the benefits that “Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell” provides to learners, one will have to consider its formal elements as well. The layout of the book is quite natural and reasonable, with each element in its place. The text does not exist on its own in the book but is connected to each picture correspondingly, one paragraph being provided per page. The space between the textual elements and the imagery allows the students to discern one from the other easily.
However, the arrangement of the formal elements of the book also offers the students a reasonable challenge, since the pictures also contain textual elements. Since the latter is written as vignettes and represents a combination of different types of fonts, students are encouraged to combine their skills of abstract thinking and analytical thinking in order to read the specified parts of the story. As a result, the book offers an opportunity to train several skills at once, which prompts an additional challenge and is an important part of training the needed literacy skills.
The combination of the theme and the tools with the help of which the key ideas are conveyed to learners allows combining the training of crucial literacy skills with the introduction of the target audience to essential social issues. As a result, “Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors” prompts the early development of children by allowing them to train both their reading skills and their ability to infer crucial messages from the book. The design of the book allows for the fastest learning process since it helps students to connect the pictures and the textual parts. At the same time, the material boosts the improvement of abstract thinking and the ability to conceptualize ideas due to the active use of images.
Conclusion
“Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell” by Tanya Lee Stone is one of the examples of a perfectly developed book for children and impeccable learning material. Due to the careful choice of design options and the focus on the main theme, the book introduces students to crucial information, simultaneously making the learning process faster. However, the book also incorporates several challenges, including the use of calligraphic fonts in its images to boost students’ ability to connect written words to their meaning and their sounds. As a result, “Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell” can be considered a perfect material for learning and the early development of young students.
Work Cited
Stone, Tanya Lee. Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell. Macmillan, 2013.