Why do images from beloved childhood picture books linger in our minds? How do picture books shape our lives early on and even into adulthood? In this book Ellen Handler Spitz explores the profound impact of reading to children, on the reader as well as the listener. She discusses well-known picture books and how they transmit psychological wisdom, convey moral lessons, shape tastes, and build a special bond between the child and the adult reader."This is a book for each and every adult (professionals and parents) who read to children providing a mutually enriching experience for child and adult. Ellen Handler Spitz has transmitted glowingly and in a wonderfully readable manner her deep and broad understanding of how the adult reading to and looking with younger and older children at books written for and artistically created for children and their readers can be a powerful positive force in the lives of children and their readers (parents). In writing this original, scholarly, highly readable book for children's readers, Ellen Handler Spitz has also enlarged our understanding of how children's capacities for pretending, playing and imagining is nurtured and enhanced in the context of a personal relationship with the reader. She demonstrates this with a literary, psychological analysis of picture story book classics that are suitable for readers and children of all agesAuthor Biography: Ellen Handler Spitz is a lecturer in the department of art at Stanford University. She writes and lectures widely on the arts, psychology, and culture. Ellen Handler Spitz is a lecturer in the department of art at Stanford University. She writes and lectures widely on the arts, psychology, and culture. She is also the author of Art and Psyche and Museu.s of the Mind