Telling Stories in Pre-School & Primary School? Don’t Ignore Wordless Books

Wordless books offer children freedom of imagination in a way that conventional storybooks cannot.  They can be great for pre-schoolers but equally interesting for children who have already begun to read. Wordless books require parents and teachers to be more imaginative and resourceful because there is no text to read aloud, and might seem less educative than say, vocabulary books with pictures, but a recent study by Daniela O’Neill and Angela Nyhout at the University of Waterloo suggests that children can explore more complex language with wordless books than with traditional picture books. Another advantage of wordless books is that they can be used in any language!

There’s no right way to tell the story of a wordless book. The trick is to let children use their imagination rather than simply sharing your understanding of the pictures with them.  A colourful, well designed wordless book tells many stories at once.

For instance, Jeyanthi Manokaran’s Flitter Flutter is the story of a butterfly that flies out of a Warli painting, taking the painter on a series of adventures. The images seem easy to interpret but you might be surprised at the child’s narration of the story. Parents could ask children to tell the story in their own words. ‘What’s happening on this page? Where’s the butterfly now? What’s the little girl doing?’ Like many wordless books this one doesn’t have a finite ending, enabling children to imagine what might happen after the last page is turned.

In Yellow Balloon Red Balloon, Ajanta Guhathakurta uses four bold colours, black, white, red and yellow to create a series of striking images which children will undoubtedly enjoy deciphering and discussing. Once again, the story enables questions, inferences and predictions. The different ways in which circles are used to create images from the natural world can be the basis for an enjoyable art session.

Some things to keep in mind when using wordless books:

• Don’t rush into telling the story: let the child spend time with the images.
• Point out minor details in the pictures.
• Build on existing vocabulary by asking questions (who, what, where, why) but don’t turn the reading into an interrogation. ‘Look at this!’ is a great phrase to focus the child’s attention.
• Allow children to turn the book around. There’s no right way up!
• Try to relate the story to the child’s daily life. ‘Remember when we saw this?’

Ideas for using wordless books in school:

• During Language Classes: Develop listening skills by going through the book in small groups and encouraging children to listen to each other as they tell stories. Encourage respectful listening and multiple interpretations.
• In an Art Lesson: encourage children to draw what happens next, put themselves into the story or create pictures using key images. For instance, with Yellow Balloon Red Balloon, children can use their imagination to create a series of balloon animals while Flitter Flutter can inspire Warli art which is created from basic shapes such as lines, circles and triangles.
• For the Drama Class: Involve children in telling the story with actions and sound effects. Flitter Flutter has a series of forest animals which lend themselves to theatrical flourish!
• In the Second Language Classroom: Get children to narrate the story in their second language, thereby building vocabulary and focussing on sentence construction.
• As a High School Project: Use the book to inspire students to create their own wordless books for younger children thereby developing narrative skills through images rather than text. Spend time on story boarding, ideation and multiple iterations.

Both books discussed above are published by National Book Trust and may be bought from any NBT store in India. Yellow Balloon Red Balloon is also available on Amazon.

Which is your favourite wordless book? Please link it in the comments section below.