Why aren't there pictures in the majority of books on Sparx Reader?

Pictures in books are a vital way to engage novice readers, especially very young ones. They complement and supplement comprehension of the narrative and are an important way to encourage and inspire learners at an early stage in their reading journeys. However, Sparx Reader does not use images in the books very frequently for several reasons: 

Pictures can influence a child's understanding of the story

Not only can they be distracting, but images can go a long way to shape meaning for students, which takes away the cognitive heavy lifting that we are asking them to do independently. While images can heighten enjoyment and interest, they do not necessarily promote careful, individual reading for comprehension and establishing meaning. 

In order to become proficient in close reading, learners must take responsibility for comprehending and establishing meaning, themselves. An image can give a great deal of insight into the narrative which can mean students do not concentrate as hard on decoding the words and contextualising them within sentences. Instead, they can get a gist of the narrative from the pictures alone. 

We want to support students to build robust and independent reading habits 

Sparx Reader is designed to support students to build strong reading habits that help them to learn to read with care, precision and insights. We believe that this particular aim is best achieved when pupils read texts by themselves without pictures. 

There are some exceptions on Sparx Reader, with good reason 

On Sparx Reader, pupils read whole texts, by themselves, without images for the most part. The only exceptions to this rule are some of our 'High Interest age, Low Reading age' books (HiLo), which are geared towards supporting reluctant, novice readers. In these books, the images are an integral part of the enjoyment of the story. However, even in these cases, the question checks are carefully calibrated so as not to focus on the images and are designed to appear before a picture is seen that might reveal the answer.