Discover Wordless Books

Early in my career, as well as my parenting life, I overlooked the wonder of wordless books. As parents and librarians, we hold literacy and the ability to read a fundamental skill in human development. There is nothing as rewarding as seeing a child develop and master reading. We flip through wordless titles and marvel at the beauty of the illustrations. It isn’t until we learn more about pre-literacy skills that we come to appreciate the added value of these titles.

A key fundamental pre-literacy skill (everything a child knows about reading before they can read) is mastering narrative skills. This involves telling stories, developing their structures, and predicting outcomes. Telling stories and interpreting them is a skill that we continue to hone throughout our lives.

One of the best aspects of wordless books is the opportunity for dialogic reading. Questions like “What do you think is happening here?”, “What do you think will happen next?” and “What do you think the author is trying to show here?” invite kids to write or say their own dialog, create their own wordless story, and re-read the book to notice subtle details.

Here are a few of my favorite wordless offerings:

An upcoming title, Lola’s Heart is a story that has a strong social-emotional learning message. Lola ventures out into the world with big dreams, but soon gets overtaken by fear and becomes heartbroken. Lola needs help to feel better so she meets various softly drawn creatures that help her find her way back with love so her heart can heal. Author Alexandra Boiger said that in this title she sees the big red bird as love, the wolf as the heart, butterflies as dreams and the little creatures as fears.  She goes on to say that her intent was for everyone to see in this story what they need to see: it is a journey through difficult emotions which will have a different effect on everyone. This book is drawn in soft pencil with lots of detail to pour over; you definitely need a hug after reading this one.

After last year’s The Three Bears and Goldilocks, Bee Waeland brings us another wordless take on a fairy tale with Gretel and Hansel. These tales are very quirky and have a bit of dark humor, as Gretel and Hansel get their “just desserts” after eating the house of a friendly witch.  The pictures are very bold, somewhat simply designed, but there is lots of room for laughter and storytelling. Hansel is turned into a frog and kids may notice that Gretel may be about to be eaten in cookie form by our witch.  These titles would be great for a Fractured Fairytale Storytime.

A Day for Sandcastles by Jonarno Lawson, and illustrated by Qin Leng, is a perfect wordless title for summer. Lovely watercolor illustrations bring the salty warm ocean to life as we follow three siblings in their efforts to build a sandcastle together. The siblings deal with the tide, the wind, and a toddler toppling their creation, but they don’t let it spoil their fun and their determination to build. This is a lovely summer title to share and talk about during your favorite beach trips.

For a slightly older reader, don’t miss Afterward, Everything was Different: A Tale from the Pleistocene by Jairo Buitrago and Rafael Yockteng. This wordless tale, illustrated in black and white graphite, follows a group of hunters and gatherers as far back as, possibly, two and a half million years ago. We watch them travel their sometimes-dangerous world and become more like the people we are today. This story focuses on one girl who begins to draw pictures of the life she observes on cave walls. Were these paintings on cave walls just art? Or were they, in fact, are first evidence of storytelling? There is some back matter talking about what we do and do not know about cave paintings, but the author points out that this moment where humans decided to tell stories fundamentally changed us. The art in this book is truly breathtaking and is sure to inspire discussion.

We keep a regularly updated title list of wordless picture books on ipage, you can see these titles and other great selections here.

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