Script for reading children’s books, visual poems, and other multimodal texts

 

Open the hands of your eyes.

 

Scoop up the drawings, images, illustrations, among the multiple modes.

What do they weigh? What do they say?

Let them sift through your fingers.

 

Scoop up the letters and words.

What do they weigh? What do they say?

Let them sift through your fingers.

 

Scoop up the drawings, images, illustrations, among the multiple modes, and the letters and words together.

Do they weigh more together than the sum of their parts?

 

Now open the eyes of your hands.

Trace the images with your fingertips.

Try to massage your vision below the surface/s of the images.

Try to embody/to be the images.

 

Trace the letters and words with your fingertips.

Try to massage your vision below the surface/s of the letters and words.

 

Now close your eyes, close your hands.

Feel the images and letters and words on the back of your eyelids.

See the images and letters and words in your chest, on your back.

 

Try not to think. Try not to judge.

Live with the piece as the piece lives with you.

Exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale.

 

Now think, reflect, gesture, awaken your eyes and fingers and palms.

Now talk.

Now talk to someone who has engaged in this process and someone who has not.

 

Repeat often.