Orbis+Pictus

[|The First Picture Book] Orbis Pictus by John Comenius



Orbis Pictus is a textbook for children and published in 1658. It was the first example of a children's encyclopedia and is considered to be the first picture book for children.

The book is divided into chapters and then divided in subjects areas. It contains 150 chapters and includes subjects such as: inanimate nature, botanics, zoology,, religion and humans and their activities.

Orbis Pictus was first published in 1658 in Latin and German. It was intially used in Germany schools. It reached the U.S. and was written in English in 1659. It also has a quad-lingual version in French, German, Italian, and Latin.

It is known as the leader for audio-visual techniques and lexical (of or relating to the words or vocabulary of a language) approach in language learning.

