Picturing America for Public Libraries

Our library created a PowerPoint presentation using the images from Picturing America and added text to explain the images and encourage the viewer to use visual thinking strategies to explore the meaning behind the images. We are hanging the images in the library on a rotating basis. Selected images have been used to supplement the discussion in book groups. The entire set of images will be hung in a local coffee shop in the near future.
Picturing America is being used by our MAD (Mothers And Daughters) for Reading group (a reading group for girls in 5th and 6th grade and their mothers) to expand on the book being read. As an example, when reading Bud Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis, we used The Ladder by Martin Puyear, Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother and Children and Selma to Montgomery March by James Karalas to expand on various discussion points for the book. We will be using the images as a starting point for an upcoming poetry writing workshop.

Submitted by Lynn Mandaville