The Pleasure of Wordless Picture Books

 

I'm going through books, getting ready for when my young readers are back from vacation. I have found that one of the most successful category of books to use with younger kids is wordless picture books. They provide kids with a way to tell a story in their own words, eliciting language and using imagination. Here are four I plan on permanently adding to our small Wordless Picture Book Library now that they have been read and enjoyed by my young readers.  

A Day for Sandcastles by JonArno Lawson,

illustrated by Qin Leng

Candlewick Press, 2022, 48 pages

A family - mom, dad, and three siblings - arrive by bus to spend a warm summer day at the beach. Pails and shovels in hand, older brother, middle sister and a toddler are ready to build a sandcastle at the water's edge. Proud of their first small castle, it is quickly washed away when a wave comes in. And so they begin again, and again, and again. Each sand castle meetings it own beachy fate. But the siblings never give up, working together as a team. What I love about this book is not just the message of teamwork and perseverance, but the feeling of being at the beach that each illustration brings. The ink and watercolor illustrations are detailed and while the focus is on the three siblings, there is the usual beach activity all around them - people swimming, others walking along the shoreline, people reading under umbrellas, kids playing ball - all captured on one and two page spreads, some with smaller, close up montages. And who hasn't encountered pesky seagulls while eating lunch at the beach, or the wind blowing someone's hat away. This day at the beach was anything but static. I could feel the sea breeze and the feeling of it blowing sand into my hair, and smell the sun screen, and the tide coming in as the day worn on and the position of the sun changes. This is a beautiful wordless picture, (and for me, nostalgic) day at the beach and I can't wait to see what my Kiddos have to say about it.     

All Around Bustletown Nighttime

written and illustrated by Rotraut Susanne Berner

Prestel Publishing, 2022, 14 pages

Welcome back to Bustletown! Previously, we read book about Bustletown throughout the seasons, and no matter what time of the year it is, it is a pretty busy, busy place. It is, after all, a wimmelbook. Is Bustletown just as busy at night as it is in the daytime? This book follows the same format as the previous books, beginning with a home where everyone is getting ready for bed, and the kids are camping out in the backyard. But, there is still activity on the street. The bus is still running, the gas station and the train station are open, just not quite as busy as in the daytime. The market is closed, and there is a sleepover for kids at the Cultural Center. But, uh oh, someone is trying to break into the bookstore. Luckily, the police have just arrived. The department store is closed, but there a window shoppers out for an evening stroll. Cara and John are out and strolling through the pages, but where are they going at night? It seems the Park Cafe is open and there are lots of people enjoying a meal with friends, plus they can watch the fireworks lighting up the night sky. Bustletown has a different look to it at night than it has during the day, but readers will meet the same people and see the same places as in the earlier books, giving all the Bustletown books a nice continuity. The illustrations are just as charming and colorful as before, but with a dark blue nighttime sky. And each of the two page spreads are elaborately detailed and each page connects to the one before and after it, providing lots of stories that kids can make up as they read their way through Bustletown, making this a great interactive book. 

The Depth of the Lake and the Height of the Sky

written and illustrated by Kim Jihyun

Floris Books, 2021, 24 pages

In her afterword, the author says she hopes this book will help readers connect to nature much the same way she did one summer and experience the same serene feeling she felt. In this story, a young boy, his parents, and their dog leave their bustling city behind and drive to the countryside to visit his grandparents. Soon after arriving, the boy and his dog go for a walk on a winding trail in the forest behind the house. The further they walk, the more the boy notices the wonders of nature around him. Eventually, he and the dog discover a lake with a dock, and the boy dives in, exploring the wonders of underwater nature. Afterward, boy and dog lay on the dock to dry off before heading home at the end of the day. What is remarkable about this wordless picture book how the author manages to convey so much in each illustration, all of which are done using writing ink and a slow-drying blending medium in a palette of grays and whites, with only touches of blue. Each image is filled with details, whether it is the street where the family lives, or the lushness of the forest with it varied flora, the long late afternoon shadows over the countryside, or a sky filled with stars. My only problem was that the boy went swimming alone in the lake. I have drummed it into my Kiddo's head to never ever swim alone, and had to give the same warning to my young readers when we read this book. Otherwise, it is a brilliant wordless picture book that really elicited lots of talk among my kids.     

The Dog Walk

written and illustrated by Sven Nordqvist

Floris Books, 2021, 32 pages

Follow a young boy in a red cap as he takes his Grandmother's big white dog for a jam-packed adventurous walk in this wordless fanciful Wimmelbook. Pulled along by the dog, the two ride a train to places where there are tree houses piled one on top of the other, people from different time periods, people and animals of exaggerated size (both large and small), and all kinds of animated objects, among other  imaginative things. Boy and dog climb mountains, cross tropical seas, explore toy and antique shops, visit overgrown villages and castles surrounded by moats, and a town where only cats live. The sights the boy and dog see are wildly imaginative, at times fun, at other times rather dark. And just like that, they return to Grandmother's house at the end of their adventure. I was a little hesitant about reading this to my young readers, but they loved exploring the pictures and I guess they've watched enough silly things on TV that they had no problems making up stories about the boy and dog on each page after they found them in all the chaos, all of them brilliantly illustrated using watercolor, acrylic, and ink.  

What are some of your favorite wordless picture books?

Once Upon a Forest written and illustrated by Pam Fong

 

Once Upon a Forest

written and illustrated by Pam Fong

Random House Studio, 2022, 40 pages

Forest fires are really scary and they seem to be happening with more and more frequency. Here is a wordless picture book that shows readers something they can do after a forest fire happens. It all begins when a little marmot, out watering his garden with his bird bestie, smells smoke in the distance. Leaving his home, the marmot goes exploring to find out where the smoke is coming from and discovers it is a forest fire.

After the fire is put out, the marmot loads up his wagon with gardening tools, and some of his own young saplings and heads into the forest with his bird friend. Saddened by the charred remains of trees and devastation he finds, the marmot quickly gets to work pulling the dead trees up, 

then clearing and raking the land to prepare it for new plants. As you can see, it doesn't take long for the soot from the fire to get all over the marmot. Pulling, raking and digging are hard work, but the two manage to finally plant some saplings, then pitch a tent to keep an eye out on things..  

They are there for the long haul and it's a good thing they are. As the saplings begin to take root and grow, they need water, protection from autumn wind, and later from winter's snow, and in spring, from hungry animals looking for some nice leafy greens.

But the trees grow and grown. Once they are strong and sturdy, the marmot and his bird friend return to their home, but just they are unpacking, it happens again - the smell of smoke is once more in the air. It looks like the help of our little environmental friends will once again be needed.

This is a charming story that shows young readers that they can do something to help an environment that has been laid waste through forest fires or any natural disasters. They can easily begin by planting a new tree at home in a small container for later replanting in a forest. But more than that, kids learn that they can participate in taking care of the nature world which is so important for it to thrive, especially if we want to enjoy it for years to come.  

Pam Fong has managed to convey all of that to us without writing a word, and instead by using detailed, grayscale illustrations that reflect the marmots thoughts and feelings, and by using a few color exceptions where they make all the difference, highlighting the green of the saplings, the blue of the stream where water for the plants is gotten and the marmot can wash away the soot that gets on his fur, and a golden cast as the day's work is done and the sun is setting. 

This is a perfect book to add to your Earth Day collection, and it is ideal for sharing as we enter another fire season with the coming summer months. There is much here for discussion and for generating ideas for caring for the earth.

Thanks you Barbara Fisch at Blue Slip Media for providing me with a copy of this book.

All Around Bustletown - Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall conceived and illustrated by Rotraut Susanne Berner

All Around Bustletown - Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall - are a series of delightful wordless giant-sized board books that follow the adventures of adults, children, animals, birds, and even objects as they go about their day.

The illustrations are charming, bright and colorful, elaborately detailed, and with the definite feeling of an old-fashioned German storybook, not surprising since they were originally published in Germany. In fact, in German, these would be called Wimmelbücher, wordless picture books of everyday scenes that are chockablock with details and each scene is connected to the others by the setting. In this case, that would be Bustletown. The detailed images that are just teeming with activity are why these books have been compared to Martin Handford's Where's Waldo books.

What I found to be really nice about these books is that there are recurring characters from book to book and each of the two page spreads give readers a cross-section view inside buildings that is reminiscent of the back of a dollhouse, and a panoramic view of what happening in the outdoor images. Each book follows the same format - starting from home (as you can see from the illustrations below) and then on to the city with stops at a farm and garage, then a small fish store and a large train station, turn the page and you arrive at a school under construction across the street from a cultural center, keep going and the center of town offers all kinds of stores and activities, this is followed by a visit to a department store for some shopping and finally a visit to a beautiful busy park. Of course, everything has a different look and feel to it thanks to the changing seasons. And yes, there is a kind of sequencing to the books. In the Winter book, the school is nothing more that a foundation. In the Spring and Summer books, readers can follow the progress of the school's construction, until the Fall when it finally opens.

And though the four All Around Bustletown books have a Where's Waldo feel to them, the books don't have a specific task attached to them, like finding a hidden object/Waldo in all the hustle and bustle. Instead, these books promote not only observational strategies, but also introduce young readers to story telling skills. And my kids had no trouble following the recurring characters. Cornelia Rémi, an expert on the Wimmelbuch, considers them to be a form of playing, an idea I particularly like. So, since we had all four books, we placed them on the floor in seasonal order, beginning with winter, like this (you can click them to make them bigger):

Conveniently, the back of each book highlights and names the main characters, so that each of my kids could choose a character to follow through each book and then each season, making up stories based on that was happening and what the character was doing along the way. What appeared to be chaos on each page began to become more ordered as they made up stories and gave purpose to each character. That was really a lot of lively fun and since there are more citizens in Bustletown than I have young readers, everyone got more than one character to story about.

All Around Bustletown - Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall has turned me into a big fan these wonderful interactive books. Each one has eight panoramic pages filled with activity and people, and reflecting the holidays of the seasons. And based on my experience, they are guaranteed to keep kids busy for quite a while. And at a time when many of us can't go out and about the way we used to, maybe a visit to Bustletown is just the ticket.

These books are recommended for readers age 4+
These books were gratefully received from Media Masters Publicity

Cornelia Rémy has written an excellent article on the Wimmelbuch that you can read HERE or in Emergent Literacy: Children's Books from 0 to 3, edited by Bettina Kümmerling-Melbauer, pp. 115-139.

The Line by Paula Bossio

A little girl in an orange dress comes across a the beginning of a line.  She picks it up and gives it a shake and, just by doing that she seems to make all kinds of shapes - a slide, a hoop, a monkey on a tree branch, monsters, and even a little bear.  But in the end, it is a little boy in a blue shirt drawing the line with a lead pencil.

This is a wordless picture book, designed to get kids to use their imaginations by talking about the illustrations, which are simple line drawings.  The only color is the little girl's dress and the little boy's shirt.  And because the little boy is using a pencil, there is pencil smudge on the pages, which I automatically kept trying to brush off.

The Line was somewhat reminiscent of Harold and the Purple Crayon, but for a younger child.  And like Harold, the line drawing gives a sense of movement as well as conveying emotions - happiness, fear, love, sneakiness.

I think I would have like a little more color in the illustrations and, well, I am sorry to say that it really bothered me that the little girl was being led around by the little boy's line.  I would have preferred she create her own line.   That was the only thing that spoiled this otherwise delightful book for me.

This book is recommended for readers age 3+
This book was an E-ARC received from NetGalley