Sharing a great picture book with a child can be a magical experience. As you explore together, you learn about the world, about each other and about the world of the imagination.
An especially magical type of picture book to share is the wordless or nearly wordless picture book. These can be quite intimidating for adults at first. There are no words to get you started and everything depends on the visual. You may say to yourself, "What am I supposed to do with this?" However, these books are well worth the effort.
If you're new to wordless books, start with titles that have just a few words and depend heavily on the illustrations to tell the story. Have You Seen My Duckling? by Nancy Tafuri is a book for younger children about a little duck that goes missing. Although there are words on every page, there is a story unfolding that is only shown in the pictures. The little duck is not really missing - he can be seen hiding on every page.
Other similar books include: Something from Nothing by Phoebe Gilman, about a mouse family that lives underneath a tailor's shop; Over Under in the Garden: An Alphabet Book by Pat Schories in which a snake chases a chipmunk all around the garden; and Diane Goode's Where's Our Mama?, in which a handful of children meet unexpectedly in Paris as they search for their mother.
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak is another nearly wordless story. This beloved book has a wordless section in the middle where the monsters have a wild rumpus. You and your child can pause and make up what the creatures are saying or how they are feeling. With these books, ask questions, make comments, wonder together about what will happen next. Don't worry about getting the story "right" as you or your child may interpret the story a new way every time you read it.
Once you are comfortable with mainly wordless picture books, try moving on to stories that have just one or two words in the entire book.
Carl Goes to Daycare by Alexandra Day starts with a page of text but after that, everything is visual. Hilarity ensues when Carl, a big, loveable dog, is left in charge of the small children at a daycare.
You Can't Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum is a fun book for slightly older children. A grandma and her granddaughter enjoy all the wonderful art in the museum while a kindly museum guard chases all around New York after the child's balloon. In this book, there are no words to get you started but an easy way to introduce the story is to read the first line or two from the description on the inside flap - the rest is up to your imagination. The balloon is bright yellow to help you follow the guard's adventures while grandma and the girl appear in separate bubbles or squares, similar to the construction of a comic book.
Jerry Pinkney's award-winning The Lion and the Mouse retells the Aesop's fable of the mighty and the weak. The only text in the book is the occasional roar or squeak made by the animal characters. Even the cover of the book doesn't have any words, just a beautiful illustration of the face of the lion.
Another accessible and excellent wordless picture book is South by Patrick McDonnell. The author uses simple yet enchanting illustrations to tell a satisfyingly sweet story about friendship and finding your way home.
Other authors specialize in completely wordless picture books. Arthur Geisert's titles, including Oops and Lights Out show wonderful contraptions that illustrate a series of events that will appeal to engineers and others who love puzzles. They may remind you of the old game Mousetrap.
Barbara Lehman's wordless picture books, such as Trainstop or Rainstorm, take the viewer into magical worlds created by a childlike imagination. Adults will feel as if they've stepped through the portal into Narnia when reading Lehman's titles.
Some wordless titles are more abstract and encourage the reader to contemplate the emotions and interactions inherent in the art. Author Suzy Lee creates books such as Wave, Mirror and Shadow that depict children at play. These complex titles have a limited palette and include plenty of white space. It is artwork that invites children to imagine themselves as the characters in the deceptively simple scenes.
Jeannie Baker, an Australian author/illustrator, creates books such as Home and Mirror, with powerful cultural or ecological themes. Her illustrations are multi-layered, detailed feasts, with lots of visual clues to move the story along.
Finally, Herve Tullet, the author of Press Here, The Game of Let's Go and others may have created a whole new genre of picture books. Although his books have some words, he forces you to use all your senses to experience his work. In The Game of Let's Go, he asks you to close your eyes, follow the raised felt lines with your finger through the book and tell the "story" in your own words. Press Here is highly interactive with a wonderful sense of humour. Both titles provide a sensory experience for children and require them to follow instructions in order to create meaning from the text.
These wordless books and many more are available at your local public library. Pick one up today, and let your imagination soar.
A Good Read is a column by Tri-City librarians that is published every Wednesday. Vicki Donoghue is children's librarian at Port Moody Public Library.
