A natural outgrowth of the “literacy” metaphor has been the level of interest by teachers of reading and researchers in
the field of reading in the relationship of visual literacy to the teaching of reading. Mulcahy and Samuels (1987) have
written an extensive history of the use of illustrations in American textbooks over the last 300 years. They point out
that only as printing technology has progressed has it been practical for publishers of textbooks to be concerned with
semantic and syntactic text parallels between the illustration and the context to the text. Having the right images in the
right places in a textbook is a concern that is as new as the visual literacy movement itself.