The Legitimacy of the Importance of Visual Arts in Reading Instruction

• My purpose is to search the WorldCat database to find articles linking visual arts in reading instruction to literacy in order to legitimize my claim that, sometimes, particularly within the context of a book such as Where the Red Fern Grows, visual arts are a necessary component of a language arts classroom.
• WorldCat. This is "a unified catalog of research libraries and public libraries throughout the world." It is "updated daily."
• In the WorldCat search box I entered the phrases "visual arts" AND "reading" AND "literacy." This search resulted in 68 sources found. Scanning through them, I discovered many valid sources, but I was most interested in the Handbook of Adolescent Literacy Research. I could not get full digital text directly through the BYU website, but I was directed to Google Books, where I was able to get a full-text preview. Once here, I scanned through the index until I found a chapter that seemed especially relevant to my interests. Chapter 13, "Visual Arts and Literacy," was such a chapter.
• Zoss, Michelle. "Visual Arts and Literacy." Handbook of Adolescent Literacy Research. NYC: Guilford Press, 2009. Web. 25 May 2011.
• This article is about the integration of visual arts and language arts into one communicative curriculum within classrooms. The article mentions that visual arts is common in elementary instruction, but it could also be beneficial in secondary instruction because it is a natural means of communication that coincides with written communication.
• The article is extremely relevant to my research because a) I am interested in the use of visual arts in secondary education and b) Where the Red Fern Grows is a novel that I believe is best explored using, as Zoss puts it, "multiple means for communication," which technique is legitimized in this article.