Wordless Books

I've been wanting to write this post for a long time. I feel very strongly that wordless books are an underutilized, unappreciated resource. Wordless books can be used from pre-k through college, and can challenge both non-readers and fluent readers alike. Wordless books have like their names suggests, no scripted text, but the illustrations provide the context for the story to unfold. The better a reader's schema and understanding of the subject, the more a student will be able to pull out any nuanced meaning from the pictures.

Below I would like to display a few authors that are really at the pinnacle of what a wordless book should be. I'll be careful to highlight the age range I would suggest for each title and any suggestions I have for how to utilize each book in the classroom.

                                                                                                        Books by Aaron Becker


Journey and Return are fantasy at the very best, filled with landscapes and many ways the story could go.

Age: 4th grade through Middle School

Lesson Suggestion: Have students tell the story, write it out. Have students choose one picture and add onto the story (choose your own adventure-esque).  Rewrite the end of the story, and add an illustration to go with it.

A Stone for Sascha was a slight departure from Becker's earlier work and depicts a clear story of a girl leaving home for a trip. On her trip she finds a stone in a lake. Most of the story is about how the stone got to it's spot in the lake, going thought thousands of years of transformation from a large stone (like the ones used in stone hedge) to a small statue, each time chipping off a smaller and smaller piece, until the stone is found by Sascha.

Age: 3rd-Middle School

Lesson Suggestion: I would pair this book with Flotsam, written by David Wiesner. Both stories depict the journey of an object from the past to present day. Compare and contrast these two stories. Imagine an additional place that the objects could have been, write a story from the objects point of view rather than the characters point of view.

Books by David Wiesner

David Wiesner books were some of the earliest wordless books that I remember reading when I was a child. They always fascinated me. I wasn't sure really about the story, just that I was able to look at the pictures and tell something was happening.

Tuesday tells about about a regular Tuesday night, but some levitating force zooms some  unassuming frogs all over town.

Age: These, again, I would read with upper-elementary through middle school. I've found that elementary kids can tell what's going on but middle and high school kids can really understand the more nuanced expressions and catch on to deeper details.

Gosh, this is a cool one! Flotsam, similarly to A
Stone for Sascha has an element of past and present day in the illustrations. This has a clearer story than Tuesday, but is still open to interpretation. A boy finds an old fashioned camera on the beach. When he goes to get the film developed he is amazed to find what the photos show!

Check out these stand alone titles--all wordless and all worth buying a copy!

The Snowman written by Raymond Briggs, tells the story of a snowy day and how a boy builds a snowman, the snowman comes alive and how the boy and snowman go on an adventure together. Drawn in cells like a comic book or graphic novel, kids can easily tell what is going on by the expressive faces and use of light that the illustrator uses to depict mood. Grade: K-8

Activities: Choose one page of panels and have students write in speech bubbles to depict the action.

Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie Depaola Everyone loves pancakes! One morning, a woman wakes up and wants pancakes. But she needs to get all the ingredients to make them. She has to tap the trees to get the syrup, she has to milk a cow and church the milk to make the butter --What a lot of work! Later, she gets a whiff from her neighbors house and pops over for breakfast. A great one to use as an anchor text or shared reading with very young kids. 

Grades: K-3 

Activities: Read together and write out the action, this is a great shared writing anchor text. Especially for ELL students. Simple actions and simple characters bring this story to life.

 I LOVE Unspoken by Henry Cole! I use this EVERY YEAR!  Unspoken tells the story of a young girl and her family who lives on a farm. One night, the young girl goes out to the store house to get some supplies, but she finds someone hiding--an escapee on the Underground Railroad! Night after night, the young girl brings food and water to the escapee, until one day some bounty men come riding by on horses and ask to look around. When the young girl goes to check on her friend, they are gone.

Grades: 3-High school




Activities: I use this book when I am practicing inferencing with my students. The story is not obvious right away and students have to take what they know (schema) about the civil war, slavery and the Underground Railroad, and use the pictures to put together a narrative

 A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka is a simple story about a dog and a ball, follow Daisy as she plays in the park. Watch as tragedy strikes and how she overcomes her adversity. Another great one to use with young children. Talk about Daisy's emotions, write out all of her action words, teach onomatopoeia (pop! wag! splash!)

Float by Daniel Miyares, like A Ball for Daisy has a simply story, but is beautifully illustrated. What I like about these simple wordless stories for young readers, is they depict happenings that many children have participated in: Walking/playing in the rain, watching a dog play in the park--Each situation is very relatable and therefore easy for students to practice their comprehension using visual media.

Let them read it over and over (and over...)

My husband asks me, "Why do you want to watch that movie again? You've seen it a hundred times!" My response: I like it. I can fast forward to all my favorite parts, I know what's going to happen, so nothing will surprise me. It's comforting to cry over the same parts that I've cried over before. Yes, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth will get together at the end of Pride and Prejudice, but it's the slow burn of the romance throughout the whole story that is the most satisfying to read/watch again and again.

Thanks A lot Jeff Kinney

As a teacher, there comes a point when I would get frustrated with some of my students who just wanted to read the same book over and over. One of my 3rd graders, let's call him Bryce, read the same book during independent reading, the entire year.

It wasn't from lack of trying that he read the same book,  I tried countless books with him, but he was only interested in reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roddrick Rules. It's taken many years for me to understand the need to reread and understand that telling kids to try other books is actually detrimental to their growth as a reader.

Changing Our Mindset
The difference between a Book Warden and a Teacher Recommending a Book is how we treat the student who is reading and how we react to the choice a student makes, whether it be to re-read a book they've read over and over or a book that we believe is not at their correct reading level. This is so lovingly depicted by Dav Pilkey (author of among others Captain Underpants and Dog Man) in the forward to From Striving to Thriving by Stephanie Harvey and Annie Ward (2017).

Instead of being annoyed with Jeff Kinney and Dav Pilkey for authoring books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dog Man, I should be thanking them over and over. They have created a new generation of readers--kids have books in their hands and they can't WAIT for the next book to come out! If that's not something to celebrate, than I don't know what is. It's all about changing the mindset of the teacher. Yes, we want our students to read and be exposed to a variety of genres and text levels. We want them to be able to decipher non-fiction text features in order to do well on the test, but really in the scheme of things, we want kids to love books and become lifelong readers and by giving them choice, and freedom to read what they want to read, we are doing just that!

The One and Only Ivan--Pass the Kleenex

Ivan: The Remarkable Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla

Reading Strategy: Compare/Contrast

Back of the Book:

Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla by Katherine Applegate

Captured as a baby, Ivan was brought to a Tacoma, Washington, mall to attract shoppers. Gradually, public pressure built until a better way of life for Ivan was found at Zoo Atlanta. From the Congo to America, and from a local business attraction to a national symbol of animal welfare, Ivan the Shopping Mall Gorilla traveled an astonishing distance in miles and in impact.

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

Having spent twenty-seven years behind the glass walls of his enclosure in a shopping mall, Ivan has grown accustomed to humans watching him. He hardly ever thinks about his life in the jungle. Instead, Ivan occupies himself with television, his friends Stella and Bob, and painting. But when he meets Ruby, a baby elephant taken from the wild, he is forced to see their home, and his art, through new eyes.


Using it in the Classroom:

A truly compelling story of determination and animal rights activism. A great way is to read both books and then discuss the true implications of the story and the fantastical story elements. Discuss how the author has incorporated fact into the fictional story and how the illustrations of the true story help the story reach a wider audience.

To purchase the book click on the book below: 

Will Sheep Sleep? Social Stories for the Very Young

What I love most about this board book series is that each one has a gentle social message about friendship--for example:

In Will Ladybug Hug, Ladybug loves to hug her friends, but sometimes there are friends that don't want to be touched in a physical embrace. This book explains that alternative greetings (high fives, handshakes, a wave) are great!

            


             

To purchase the book click on the book below:

Reluctant Readers REJOICE!

Over the years, I have seen so many students check out library books that are much too hard for them to read. They diligently and patiently sit by, turning pages and look around to see what their peers are doing, desperately wishing they could read a chapter book like them.

Enter: Andy Griffiths' "kid-pleasing, tongue-tripping verse" in The Big Fat Cow Goes Kapow and The Cat on the Mat is Flat. Each book contains short stories and fun illustrations a la Diary of a Wimpy Kid. With only a few words per page, your reluctant or beginning reader will feel accomplished turning the pages they can actually read and will look like their peers holding a medium-thick chapter book.


                                         

To purchase the book click the link below:

The Unbudgeable Curmudgeon and Identifying your Emotions through Color

Emotions come in all shapes and sizes...even colors! Reading about and discussing emotions with children is such an important part of their growth and development.

Sharing books with your child(ren) that contain relatable characters and scenarios are an easy way to bridge this often challenging topic. Children have big emotions, and can not always verbalize what their feeling are, in the same way adults can. Using books that feature metaphors to represent feelings, helps the child(ren) to visualize the abstract concept with something they can understand (monsters or the use of color)

In their brand new book, author Matthew Burgess and illustrator Fiona Woodcock give a human character's emotions and feelings a personality and shape all of it's own. Eventually, the larger than life curmudgeon calms down back into their regular own (human) form.

Social Emotional Learning is a large part of the elementary school curriculum. Students are now taught about why they feel the way they do, how they can hone their big emotions and work through them in a productive manner.

Just like in the Pixar film Inside Out, we are not just one emotion, we are made up of many and some of these emotions, students (and adults) need help and practice knowing how to use. In her work with Social Emotional Learning, Leah Kuypers created the Zones of Regulation--a program designed to assign a color to four common emotional "zones" that any given person could be in. This has been a great help to the students in my class and has even  helped me understand my two year old's ever-changing mood;-)

Here are a few more books that I have used to help introduce The Zones of Regulation and talk about feelings and emotions:

Such a beautiful book of Dr. Seuss's words brought to life by Johnson and Fancher. I've used this book as a read aloud on the first day of school to help get kids to visualize their first day jitters. We follow this up with a little water color painting. It's a great way to get kids thinking and creating on the first day!

Such a great book to explain the stages of anger--the author/illustrator uses large brush strokes to depict movement and color to show the anger diffusing and Sophie returning to calmness. 

Another EXCELLENT choice for explaining the process of emotional response. Allie becomes a monster and her brother helps her move through the emotional process with breathing and calming exercises. Each time she succeeds with a phase she "sheds" a layer of monster.
So clever!

Exposing Young Children to LOVE

In a recent open letter to Kate DiCamillo (Children's Author, two-time Newbery Medalist and former National Ambassador for Young People's Literature), Matt de la Pena (2016 Newbery Medalist) asked Kate: “How honest can an author be with an auditorium full of elementary school kids? How honest should we be with our readers? Is the job of the writer for the very young to tell the truth or preserve innocence?” 

In his new book Love (beautifully illustrated by Loren Long), de la Pena talks about all the kinds of love that a child experience through out the course of their childhood -- starting from when they just open their eyes and see adoring eyes looking down at them, to the love of a brother, who has been charged in making his little brother breakfast because the parent has to leave for second shift. Matt's original article about the backstory to his question to Kate can be found here.

DiCamillo's response was eloquent as always and so right for the climes and times that we live in. See her response here.

In her essay, "Why children's book should be a little sad", Kate talks about how exposing young children to real life topics --  homelessness, domestic violence and poverty -- is the right thing to do in a picture book. I can not agree with her more. In my own sheltered childhood, I was read the classics -- Madeline's Rescue and The Little House among others. Where the only adversity in the illustrations could only be seen with an eye of scrutiny. Not to say that there were not children's books available during my childhood that breached said topics. Author Eve Bunting and others were pioneers in writing books with a social message, which we now call "diverse books". Authors and publishers have made it easy to find and read these "diverse books" in the 21st century, we can pick up a book about a family with two moms and a boy who wants to dress like a mermaid at our neighborhood Barnes and Noble. These are beautiful stories to be shared with people we love. A picture book provides a caretaker and child an opportunity to talk about topics in a non- threatening environment where parents/caretakers can model correct language and answer their child's questions.

A parent is a child's first teacher. If we avoid or deem certain topics taboo or off limits (world religions, sexual orientation and homelessness) children continue the cycle of complacency and ignorance that leads to prejudice and assumptions in our society. Children are naturally curious, so talking with children about what they see and feel, while using children's books to guide the discussion is a gentle way to start the conversation.

So I thank you Matt, and I thank you Kate for sharing real life in your work. For real life is really all there is and by sharing these books with our children, we will get through it together.

To purchase the book, click on the book below: