The University of Findlay houses the Mazza Museum which is the first and largest museum of original picture book art. The art of picture books is normally created to be photographed for a book. Once copies of the original art are made, many pieces end up at the Mazza.
There are school buses full of kids that visit the museum almost every day. The students can walk through the museum and see the original art hanging above a copy of the published book. No matter what your age, they have artwork from a book you read as a child or read to your own child.
When the United States Postal Service decided to release a series of stamps with picture book art, they came to Mazza for the release.
Many famous authors and artists come to Mazza each year for special events. Today Gail Gibbons was the guest artist. She writes and illustrates picture books. Her specialty is non-fiction for grades kindergarten through three. She goes to extra lengths to make sure her content is accurate. If she writes about an animal, she researches everything about the animal. By doing this, her readers learn content that is correct.
She is not a technophile. It was obvious to the older people in the crowd as she pulled out a carousel of 35mm slides. She had no PowerPoint presentation. Everything was done the old fashioned way with a slide projector.
She said one thing that stuck with me. When she first started writing picture books, she visited the library to find out more information about her selected book topics. She said she was amazed at the number of books in the library with inaccurate information. Because of this she always checks multiple resources to make sure the information she writes in her books is accurate.
This goes back to my post about Wikipedia. We need to learn to hone this skill in our students. Getting information is easy. Determining which information is valuable is priceless.