In Praise of the Wordless Picture Book

Some of the texts we find ourselves advocating the most are the ones which themselves have no words. Yes, all hail the wordless picture book. Often misunderstood, frequently overlooked, commonly mis-shelved, the wordless picture book is a genre difficult to pin down and define. Sadly, many would place these amongst books for children not yet able to decode or decider words or overlook them as part of the children’s literary canon due to their lack of language. In reality, these are books with almost limitless depth and possibility. They are books which regularly ask more questions than they answer and leave the interpretation firmly in the hands of the reader. They are books which require us to look and look again, discovering more each time we revisit.

So, in an educational landscape so firmly focused upon the need to use phonological knowledge as the principal route to reading, what is the place, purpose and importance of encouraging and nurturing a love of wordless texts? Reading pictures is arguably just as valid and important a way of decoding as reading words on a page. In fact, it lends itself more immediately to the kind of inferential reading we know children need to be readers for life. Abstract concepts which can’t be summed up with the use of the 40+ phonemes can be told beautifully and eloquently through the use of a single image. The quality of metaphor that can be explored, developed and sustained by the experts of the wordless text would match even the most complex of written works and yet they provide an immediacy that ensures children (perhaps for whom phonics is not the preferred strategy for reading) can engage and be immersed in the story and be taken on a literary journey by the author. The wordless text prides itself in its subtlety, allowing the reader to make their own discoveries and draw personal conclusions. Although it is difficult to attribute an age-range to a text, the content and context of these books is often pitched at older readers, lending themselves to imagery more appropriate for a more sophisticated reader. In fact, some very able children with whom we were working recently described ‘The Arrival’ as the most difficult book they had ever read.

There are many masters of the wordless craft, some better known than others. We are frequent advocates of the wordless ‘celebrity’ authors, such as Shaun Tan and David Wiesner, both of whom bring an air of the abstract to their illustrations, often merging real and surreal to draw the reader in to their world. In The Arrival, Tan uses shadows of menacing tentacles to represent the approach of a foreboding threat to inhabitants. The surreality of the new and promising land to which the protagonist moves serves to represent unfamiliarity and distance us from the world that has been created. Wiesner uses the image of the flying frogs to conjure a world of absurdity and take the reader on a fantastical journey. Jeannie Baker uses mixed media and collaged images to create multi-layered worlds, often acting as contrasts with one another and pushing the reader to think about themes such as culture, industrialisation, conservation and sustainability. This is so skillfully and uniquely achieved in Mirror, where the contrasting locations of Australia and Morocco are placed side-by-side.

Alongside such names, there are many unsung and lesser-known heroes of the wordless world. In Suzy Lee’s Wave, stunning watercolour images tell the story of a little girl’s day by the sea. Evocative through its simplicity, the full landscape of the double page is used to create a sense of space and distance. In Laëtitia Davernay’s The Conductor, outlines and blocks of colour are used to construct the metaphor of the forest and its inhabitants becoming an orchestra.

Stylistically, there is a whole range of differences of approach to illustration, which is what makes it such a difficult genre to define. On the one hand is the realism of Wiesner and Thomson’s high-colour graphics which take us through their story arcs in startling detail. On the other is the pencil drawn detail of Shaun Tan, Henry Cole and Chris Van Allsberg, which force you to look at the contrasts between the light and dark of the charcoal and thus place emphasis upon different elements of the illustration. The cartoon-like immediacy and vivid use of colour of Aaron Becker, Barbara Lehman and Istvan Banyai’s work lead to a different level of engagement and our eye is drawn towards different aspects of the work. All of which lead the reader on a different route through the work, building up emotions, inferences and differing responses to the text.

We are often asked to recommend ways of using such texts both at home and in the classroom and feel that there is huge potential in asking children to use the images to create their own narratives, writing the words that the author has left out (we are not averse to contriving a letter from an author that falls out of the book as they read, asking children to write the words that have gone missing). They provide a great opportunity for children to write the imagined dialogue that could take place between characters in different scenarios. These books can be used within the context of a guided reading session and are great for focusing on inferential questions. Of course, there is also great value in just reading and enjoying these beautiful books for the sake of reading them.

Whichever author or text we choose to look (and look again) at, what stands out is how remarkably and subtly these mesmerising narratives are told and how their long-lasting appeal will mean that successive generations of readers will engage with them in many different ways.

To find out some of the wordless texts we like the most, read our list of Wordless Picture Books.