Pictures to words, words to pictures

I wanted to be many things when I was little. When I was 5, I saw my 20-year old cousin playing the violin, and thougtht for the longest time, I'd become a violin player. I loved making clothes for my paper dolls in my early teen years, and I thought I should become a fashion designer. I wanted to be an architect when I was in high school, but after realizing that one needed much training in math and physics to become one, I gave up the idea quickly. I also wanted to be a children's book illustrator at some point, and I still think it must be one of the most fabulous jobs. (I know nothing about how an illustrator gets connected to publishers or authors, what kind of timeline they are given to finish work, how much artistic freedom they have, or how good/bad the pay is--for all I know it could be a very sucky job, but I just idealize the work from the end results I see in printed books.) Henni certainly pays equal attention to both the pictures and the words to the books I read for her. I think that at this stage in their development where words are still such a new realm in their brain, what they are able to see must supersede what they are able to understand through words in some ways. In this video where Henni is reading the all-too-familiar Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See, I see her acting out some parts (about the purple cat) and adding different words that are not actually in the text, based on what she sees in the pictures. When I read Henni a new book, it is clear that sometimes she likes it because of what it says and sometimes because how it is pictured. As adults we have grown accustomed to reading books solely based on the quality of texts. We think we are cool because we can "imagine" on our own the worlds the books describe without anyone else picturing them for us. But I think it would be fun if books for grown-ups also had some illustrations. (This must be the art historian in me talking.) Obviously the pictures in children's books are not just straight-forward visual descriptions of what the authors write, but rather an interpretation or an adjacent mode of story telling, and they make the texts richer and more enjoyable. How fantastic it is to be able to put pictures to words and words to pictures. I always read the title as well as the author of a book before I start reading for Henni now, partly because I want to instill in her the idea that all texts have owners (this is the academic in me talking--I am far too sensitive about plagiarism). She is now always asking, "mommy, who wrote this book for me?" when we start a new book. I am considering if I should also mention the name of the illustrator for her, because pictures certainly have owners too. To think that these writers and illustrators are shaping the world in the minds of my children along with me! Salute to all writers and illustrators!