The article depicts the peculiarities of the ratio between verbal and visual components in modern books for kids. The article reviews some book types where the visual content prevails (wimmelbilderbuch, picturebooks, «bookturepics», etc.). Resting upon the researchers' works, the author points out the complementary and contrapuntal strategies of word and picture interaction in illustrated books. The functions of illustrations are singled out: it can provide visual accompaniment to words, help the imagination to comprehend the plot of the book, supplement the verbal artistic reality; it can also be involved in plot development and changing the narrative of the words; illustration can set a multimodal and two-address character of the book. The loose connection between verbal and visual components sometimes performs an important function of defamiliarization withdrawing both the visual and the verbal out of the automatism of perception. The article underlines the potential of books where the visual content dominates when working over the speech development, especially with children who study Russian as a foreign language.