Why Grown-Ups Need Picture Books Too

It's about slowing down

Hello, Seekers!

Why do we stop reading picture books when we grow up?

dystopian hum
of hybrid automobile
sends scrub-jay flying

Why Grown-Ups Need Picture Books Too

In the United States, very few adults read comic books. Most of us stop reading picture books by the end of first grade.

We have this false notion that pictures are for kids and grown-ups read big blocks of text. Many adults think all comic books are superhero stories. But comics are so much more.

There are literary comics, non-fiction comics, and even horror comics. Comics aren’t a genre, they’re a medium. But why should adults bother with picture books?

In Japan, comics are not considered an exclusively childish medium. On many occasions, entrepreneur and podcaster Tim Ferris has spoken of his love for a set of Japanese judo comics that have some of the best instructions he’s ever found in a book.

Comics and picture books are another way to tell stories. If you don’t read comics, you are missing out on some of the most important literature of the past fifty years. Books like Maus, The Best We Could Do, and They Called Us Enemy, will show you a world you could not access with text alone.

Why do children read picture books? The art helps children process stories. Adult brains still benefit from seeing words and pictures together. Reading a picture book as an adult has a way of slowing you down. When you read slower and examine the art on a page, you process what you’re reading and seeing at a deeper level. You are able to make more connections and have more insights because you are not racing through the text.

I make poetry comics for precisely this reason. I want people to slow down and spend time with the poems, and pictures provide a natural brake on people’s obsessive-novelty-seeking skimming behavior.

We all need more beauty in our lives. Picture books give you one more way to access your imagination.

It’s disappointing to realize that most of us will stop drawing, stop writing our own stories and poems, and stop reading picture books all while we are still in the early years of our education.

Picture books help connect us to our creativity—to our inner child.

In our rush to become less childish, we often also become less childlike. We are anxious to mature and grow up, and we sacrifice our imagination and creativity to fit into a mold dictated by companies that do not have our best interests at heart.

If you want to feel more connected to your soul, try reading a picture book, I promise it won’t make you revert to sucking your thumb—but it might make you revert to creating for the sake of creating (that’s the real danger!)

Artist Note

I love electric cars and am a big proponent of them. They’re an essential part of staving off the climate crisis. However, whenever I hear the fake hum of one of these cars it sends me to the uncanny valley. We had to make quiet cars louder to keep people from getting hit. I find that notion disturbing.

If you want to see an interesting video about newspaper comics check this out! (Thanks to

E.R. Flynn

for sharing this on Notes a few weeks back).

Here’s another haiku comic GIF for your amusement:

Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Jason