[bksvol-discuss] Re: Describing Pictures In Children's Books

Thanks for your comments, Ann. So where there's a
mixed group of children looking at  something--I seem
to remember a bus for some reason in one of the
earlier  children's books I did--may Pickles for
Pittsburgh of some such-in addition to stating the
ethnicity of the non-Caucasians, I suppose I must also
describe the ethnicity of the Caucasians.

BTW, what's Politically Correct these days? I was
saying African-American but now my most PC daughter
says it's o.k. to say Black. My Black friends and
colleagues never did like the term African-American;
we're Americans, they said. Of course, they, like I,
are older, and grew up when Negro was the preferred
term--but they prefer Black to African- or
Afro-American. I prefer not to describe people, when
talking about someone, by ethnicity but by other
physical characteristics or personality traits, but
sometimes it is necessary. smile I wonder if that's a
characteristic of people my age. Dan, is it you who
are about my age and who was a child in the 40's? I
remember one of you men is, but I'm not sure of the
name.

G. Cindy
--- Ann Parsons <akp@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Grandma, I think you're doing just fine.  For
> children and adults who 
> are blind, and especially for those of us who were
> born blind, 
> descriptions of pictures should be as detailed as
> you want to make 
> them.  Use color.  This is a good learning
> experience for kids because 
> they have to know about color.  They have to be able
> to understand the 
> meaning, the intellectual meaning of blue or purple
> or yellow.  they 
> also need to understand, in simple terms about
> perspective, that things 
> look smaller if they are farther away, much as a
> sound is fainter if it 
> is far away.  They need to understand the difference
> between background 
> and foreground too.  Like a person may be the main
> feature of a 
> picture, but that person is standing on a beach,
> back to the ocean, and so on.
> 
> As for not mentioning the ethnicity of the children
> in the pictures, 
> Grandma, that's like saying you won't tell a kid
> that there's a brown 
> or a black or a pokadotted dog in a picture.  A
> sighted kid is going to 
> see an Afro-American kid and is going to recognize
> the ethnicity.  He 
> is going to see a blond girl with blue eyes, or a
> Chinese boy with 
> almond shaped eyes and the slant that they have. 
> Sighted kids see this 
> and they are taught to recognize what they see.  It
> is part of the 
> identification process.  Think you may be confusing
> description with 
> value judgments.  You can say, I see three
> Afro-American people walking 
> up the street.  There is a mother, a father and a
> little girl in a 
> bright pink dress.  That places no value judgment on
> what you see at 
> all, it's just description.  If, on the other hand
> you added an 
> evaluation to the description, e.g. that blond man
> looks nice.  That 
> dark man looks bad.  Then, you'd have a problem. 
> Data is data.  What 
> the human mind does with that data is its problem.
> 
> <smiling>  Now, if you're blind and you don't have a
> describer handy, 
> you can really get yourself into trouble.  Here's a
> graphic example.  
> Our Secretary of State is Condoleezza Rice.  Well, I
> heard the name, I 
> must have read it in the online newspapers, but I
> invisioned a tall, 
> Scandinavian looking person with long blond hair and
> so on.  I only 
> found out a couple of years ago that Condoleezza
> Rice is Afro-American. 
> I was totally blown away!  I mean, I was completely
> surprised.  So, if 
> you think that alerting kids to what ethnicity the
> children in the 
> pictures are doesn't matter, it does.  So, just
> describe.  Don't 
> evaluate, just describe.  You'll do just fine!
> 
> Ann P.
> 
> -- 
> Ann K. Parsons
> Portal Tutoring
> EMAIL:  akp@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.portaltutoring.info
> "All that is gold does not glitter,
> Not all those who wander are lost."
> 
> Email services provided by the System Access Mobile
> Network.  Visit 
> www.serotek.com to learn more about accessibility
> anywhere.
>  To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to
> bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject
> line.  To get a list of available commands, put the
> word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
> 
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 
 To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to
bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line.  To get a list of 
available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.

Other related posts: