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If you know me, you know that I am a huge fan of books. Books have so many purposes for every age and stage of life: learning, parenting, teaching, relaxing, and creating can all be done through books. Research has shown that books provide innumerable benefits to developing children. Books stimulate language, cognition, curiosity, and memory, and they are considered a significant factor in a child’s reading achievement and overall educational success.
There is one category of books that may be overlooked or under-appreciated, particularly when it comes to teaching and learning – wordless books. It sounds like an oxymoron; “how can you read a book with no words?” But a little digging uncovers a wealth of possibilities in books filled with pictures and no words.
I will admit that at first thought, wordless books seem like not much more than a simple story told with beautiful pictures. So, let’s think for a minute what happens when we read a book without words. In the absence of words, we must use the visual information (pictures) combined with our own imagination to tell the story. There is a freedom to use creativity with no right or wrong answer. For young readers or struggling readers, this translates to a relief from the pressure to read words accurately, and it allows children to enjoy reading. Additionally, wordless books can inspire students as artists; they serve as an example that pictures can tell a story and encourage students to tell stories through their own artwork.
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Fostering a love and enjoyment of books in and of itself is a wonderful thing. We can go a step further and use wordless books as a tool to teach and practice a wide range of skills with a variety of age levels. Here are just a few concepts we can incorporate into wordless books:
- Pre-literacy book concepts, such as identifying the cover, title, and author, orienting the book correctly, and turning pages left to right
- Vocabulary and picture recognition
- Verb tenses
- Sequencing and Predicting “what happens next?”
- Perspective taking, such as identifying emotions
- Problem solving – can the student use the pictures to identify the problem and the solution
- Asking and answering questions
There are so many wordless books available, I couldn’t possibly list them all, so I have selected just a few of my very favorites to list below. I encourage both parents and therapists to revisit and expand your libraries to include these and other wordless books, for the enjoyment of you, your children, and your students!
Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann
Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie DePaola
Frog, Where Are You by Mercer Mayer
Red Sled by Lita Judge
Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle