Picture book bibliotherapy: a handbook for individual and group counselling

Picture storybooks offer situations that are at once universal and unique, and they do this through the skillful interweaving of art and text. Unfortunately, their potential as instruments of bibliotherapy is rarely realized. This project was undertaken to present the multidimensional nature of picture books and their efficacy as therapeutic tools. To that end, I researched bibliotherapy approaches and combined tenets of affective bibliotherapy with methodologies of reading theorists and practical applications from reader response theory to create a new therapy, which I christened picture book bibliotherapy. I crafted a handbook of read aloud strategies, processing activities, group workshops, and therapy termination procedures to use with 12 commercial picture books, in order to inspire therapists and clients to explore the world of talented writers and illustrators, with the ultimate goal of finding new ways of experiencing personal growth and change. --P. ii.