Curriculum Resources : Wordless Picture Books

You can find our Curriculum Resources Collection down the end of the first floor of Walsall Campus library. This is an expansive collection of textbooks, fiction books, big books, picture books, storysacks, artefact sets, games, and much more.  

These are a great hands-on resource especially for our early years, education, and PGCE students to use in planning and placement in primary and secondary settings. 

In a previous post we discussed Artefacts, Storysacks, today we will turn our attention to Wordless Picture Books, also called Stories without Words. These are picture books with no or minimal words. 

The narrative of the book is conveyed purely through illustrations, relying on the imagery and imagination of the readers to carry the work story along. Because of this mutability, the story can change each time, as different readers add different elements, imagine slightly different conversations, or read into different aspects of the image. These books are excellent tools  in helping to encourage children develop their speaking skills. Without the words on the page the children can describe what they see in their own words and with their own ideas.

Wordless picture books can also be useful to help examine concepts and existing assumptions with children.

What will they name the nameless character who wanders the pages of Flashlight, illuminating the wildlife with their torch.  Will they call them a boy or a girl? Will they see curiosity or playfulness or maliciousness in the characters actions when there are no textual clues to guide their way, just the image on the page. 

We have a great selection of worldless picture books covering a range of topics, themes and ideas. The Tree and the River by Aaron Becker, provides snapshots of the same tree at a river bend as a civilisation grows up around them, starting with sparse houses, the city walls, then eventually as a technology filled city, to ruins and then back to countryside again. This story can help spark lots of questions;

• Will students read this as a story of life cycles?
• A story of human impact on nature?
• Will they see the story as having a sad ending or a hopeful one?
• Will they look at the image of buildings and faceless figures and see themselves and their own communities and history, or as something foreign and strange? 

Without words, these books provide a whole canvas for ideas and expression for children to explore and discuss. 

View our Wordless Picture Books collection for a full list of whats available.