How picture books help young children's minds to grow

A woman who self-identified as a grandmother stopped me in the street just now when I was shopping, and told me that her granddaughter used to ask her to read a picture book to her, by reading one side out loud and the granddaughter said that she would 'read' the other side. But she couldn't 'read' in the usual sense of the word, but what she would do was 'read' the pictures and tell stories. It was wonderful, the grandmother said, 'Aren't children wonderful?' 

It is precisely this - that the child had invented - which does the 'work' in why and how reading picture books slowly with young children enables them to think. If we ponder for a moment and think of the mental processes going on when the child was doing this: hearing grandmother read the written part of the book, relating that to how the child perceived the pictures, inventing narratives from visual images, synthesising the whole thing so that it was a satisfying, enjoyable, meaningful experience. 

We might guess (without having a transcript in front of us) the child, at times, empathised with the characters, 'harvested' what she knew of the story and 'applied' it to the stories she was making up, using cognitive awareness of things we, as adults, take for granted, eg rain making you wet, wind blowing hats off, things falling down that might be dangerous and a 100 if not a 1000 other aspects of cognition. 

All in that one process of reading slowly with a child, sharing a book, giving space for the child to explore, investigate, invent, talk, think.