One of the main purposes of the classroom-based research featured in this article was to develop 9-year-old students' visual meaning-making skills and competences by focusing specifically on elements of visual art and design in picturebooks. The complexity of the picturebook format requires and rewards slow looking by readers/viewers. However, students need to receive instruction about and have opportunities for engaging in slow looking in order to develop the disposition to do so. The discussion of slow looking is situated in four frameworks that focus on the centrality of careful observation of images. Descriptions of some of the pedagogy delivered during the study that featured students engaging in slow looking and visual analysis are followed by examples of students' written work that reveals their close observation of and analytical thinking about elements of visual art and design in picturebook artwork.