Adding a new perspective is something I do in coaching all the time. Sometimes you can understand your life, a new idea, someone else’s idea, by using a different perspective. Standing in another (mental) place to look at the problem. Now I wanted to explain something difficult for a client. The library is my favorite place to do research. On my way in, a coyote trotted by. Ah, life in the desert.
- Investigataing Art by Moy Keightley
I just needed some instruction, easy enough for a child to understand. That was the exact way I needed to explain the difficult topic. The adult section’s books were not interesting, had no pictures, and were too wordy.
Back to the library computer, to look for a book on the topic in the children’s section. It’s a trick I’ve used before–and needed again. Well-written children’s books stick to the essentials, and use step-by-step instruction. The author of a well-planned children’s book will take a difficult topic and break it down into easy to understand pieces, logically arranged. So easy an adult can understand it.
I found what I needed by doing research in the children’s section. Because our library has self-checkout, I didn’t get asked any questions about grandchildren visiting. And now my clients will understand something difficult because I made it easy enough for a child to understand.
–Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach, who owns Quinncreative. She is a trainer in business writing and keeps a raw art journal.
Quinn
I do so agree! Because I am mostly self taught in drawing I have often used Children’s books on drawing for my practice and instruction. It has reall helped me gain perspective and confidence in learning to draw and to explain proceedure when I teach a class. You hit it on the head!
Thanks, Mary. I think I’m going to start seeing a lot of adults in the kids’ section!
You know, it’s for this exact reason that I want to sit in on my son’s piano lessons when he starts. Maybe I will actually learn to read music that way, huh? I can dream!
Every week I watch the episodes of the Beagle on television and enjoy it tremendously. So this past sunday there was an episode about climate change and the scientists explained everything so well to the viewers.. it is very complicated material and the explanations were good enough for 12-year olds and older.
The link: http//beagle.vpro.nl
Good choice Quinn by going to the childrens section in a library.
It’s a really good resource. OK, I also became aware of how much children’t literature is awful. But there is a lot of crummy adult lit. too.
I think this might be the same idea expressed a bit differently, but I find structuring explanations as if they’re stories helps many people understand. The most compelling example I’ve ever seen is “A Pattern Language” by Christopher Alexander (and a lot of coauthors). It’s about architecture and how to make rooms, houses, and communities that work, and its underlying form is “story”. Hard to adequately explain but very rewarding read. More here: http://www.patternlanguage.com/
My idea of story must be very different from yours. I found the pattern language site to be a series of more and more choices (bulletted lists of links opening to more lists with bullets) and no unifying story. Many of the links don’t work, and the Pattern section requires registration. I finally found a page that opened to a “story” (for me a story is a narrative with a beginning, middle, end, and characters that have a problem and solve it, or try to), and ran across this sentence: “In the ideal interactions of pedestrians and cars, cars are vibrant, pedestrians are vibrant, the two zones are separate, but touch everywhere.” Huh?
Hmmm, I guess the book is better. Actually I thought the book was available to read online at that site but I guess there are only a few excerpts. The site kinda sucks, apparently. The book, though, is quite amazing.
You hardly ever lead me astray, so I’ll go check out the book at the library. I still love the library, although my card will cost me $60 next year.
I totally agree with Pete about loving “A Pattern Language” and can see how even the book will be a bit dense – it’s a huge tome. A more accessible introduction to this pattern language is a coffee-table-style “picture book” titled “Patterns of Home: The Ten Essentials of Enduring Design” by Max Jacobson, Murray Silverstein, and Barbara Winslow. I recently checked it out of my local library and thoroughly enjoyed the blend of technical and aesthetic. For me it was story in the sense of “set up a situation/problem, accompany the protagonist/designer through addressing the situation, revel in the successful resolution.”
Speaking of libraries, I’ve now requested “Architecture is Elementary” and look forward to reading it soon – thanks for the tip, Bo!
This is such wise advice. I use the children’s department for all kinds of research. I do all my research on architecture with kid’s books. (Trying to read an adult book on architecture is rather like torture — too much math and gobbledegook.)
My favorite is Architecture is Elementary by Nathan B. Winters. He builds his book chapter by chapter, and each chapter starts with preschool level concepts, then adds complexity. If you actually make it through to the end of each chapter, he’s presenting material, concepts, thinking questions an architectural student or perhaps even architect might be challenged by. It’s an AMAZING way to structure a book.
Yep, I agree. I do a lot of research in the children’s section.