Because artwork matters.

Older struggling readers need visual cues to help them understand what they are reading. They deserve mature art that has multiple meanings, honors their intellect, and is not embarrassing to be seen with. Simplistic artwork that merely mirrors what is written in the text is not only condescending to older students but can encourage them to depend on pictures to guess at words rather than practice the skills to read them. Well-crafted illustrations give students a firm grounding in what the text is about but also expresses ideas well beyond.

Example from Just the Beginning, artwork by Erika Villareal Bunce, (c) 2024:

Here the narrator is grappling with how she feels about her presence in America,  and the illustration adds more layers to this that teachers can take advantage of:

• What is the narrator thinking about as she is considering being glad and mad? (The women in her family, the jobs they have had, the sacrifices they have made.)
• What are these silhouettes? (Slaves, market women, sharecropper, domestic worker, Northern Migration, Black Power, historic progress). 
• What does the road represent? (The path of history) 
• The road’s texture changes as time passes. What does this represent? (How difficult life has been at different times. Their surroundings, moving from rural to urban.)
• What does the ship indicate? (Slavery). What body of water is that then? (The Atlantic Ocean)
• Did they notice that the narrator’s hairstyle echoes the rows in the cotton field?
• Students can think about attaching years to the time periods represented
• Students can choose one silhouetted figure to research and flesh out. 
• Students can draw or create a collage of their own family histories with themselves at the center. 

This type of analysis, impossible with simplistic art, allows these stories to be used full classroom.