Wordless Picturebooks

A beautiful, award-winning wordless picture book. It follows the journey of a young girl who draws a magic door in her bedroom and travels through fantasy worlds by boat, balloon and magic carpet. Highly recommended for pupils across the whole primary range.

Over The Shop is a wonderfully illustrated and enjoyable wordless picture book that tells the story of the need to find a tenant for the flat above a shop, which has unfortunately fallen into disrepair. The shop itself is run by a grandma and her granddaughter. However much they try, they cannot seem to find a tenant with real vision for the space above the shop, until a couple with big ideas comes along. The fact that this book is wordless means that it would be a great resource to create art, explore through drama and inspire writing opportunities across a whole school or in any individual year group.

There is a theme of kindness, community and acceptance weaved within the story too, which could also be explored and discussed further. The illustrations by Qin Leng are colourful, detailed and symbolise the transformation of not only the accommodation as the story progresses but also the relationships between the characters. They help to bring the characters to life and as a reader, you can infer what the characters are like based on their actions in the drawings, especially that of the young girl. This is a lovely wordless story to share in a primary school setting.

This award-winning wordless picture book offers endless opportunities for discussion and creative writing. A beach-combing young boy finds a washed-up camera on the shore, and when the film is developed it reveals a fantastic new world of creatures from the ocean. Incredible illustrations that speak for themselves. Read our blog for inspiration from one talented teacher who brought a Flotsam literacy unit to life.

Where the Forest Meets the Sea is a hauntingly beautiful picture book that forces the reader to consider what is really lost when humans build upon previously untouched landscapes. The story follows a boy and his grandad as they explore a largely untouched wet-tropical rainforest that meets the sea. The pictures contain hidden images depicting past inhabitants, teaching the reader how the forest has supported life beyond just the modern snapshot. The question mark that hangs over this beautiful landscape is saved for the very last image. As a reader, this book manages to make me feel innocent and guilty at the same time and, in a very accessible way, forces the reader to consider the natural environment and how it should be protected and not just for the sake of the future, but for the sake of the past.

If you are looking for a book to stimulate discussion and debate about the effects human beings can have on the natural world, this is the one for you. The illustrations are so incredibly detailed (there is also a big book edition available on Amazon that is perfect for detail-spotting) that you might be forgiven for thinking that some of them are photographs. The book has won multiple awards and is sparking deep consideration of the past, present and future of the rainforest.

In this stunning picture book, which is wordless except for the odd animal sound, Aesop’s famous fable gets a reworking in an African Serengeti setting. The pictures tells the story of a ferocious lion who is freed from a hunter’s trap by a little mouse, whom the lion had spared from being eaten once before. This is a book that will have children of all ages hooked through its timeless themes of friendship and kindness as well as its incredibly vivid artwork bringing deep human emotions into the world of nature.

Caged is a wordless picture book in which simple, effective illustrations build up in small steps to the final ‘finished’ pictures. The story begins with a bluebird making a nest in her forest and she appears to be watching the actions of two men interfering there. As her nest is growing, she watches these men destroying this forest, which houses colourful parrots. As the men destroy the parrots’ habitat, they cage each parrot they find and build a palatial structure with the caged parrots.

The slow build-up of the illustrations throughout the book means that there are plenty of clues to spot on each page to show how the story is developing and to predict the next part of the story. Colour is used selectively throughout the book: initially, only the birds in the story are given any colour and the vibrant birds stand out from the colourless humans. This means that the viewpoint automatically shifts to that of the birds, instead of the humans. However, just before the end of the book, there is a slight change in colour use which could indicate the fate of the men.

There are some interesting discussions that can be brought up throughout the text. The value of individual liberty is an obvious link: should these men use their own freedom to cage other animals for their own (and other humans’) entertainment? Should animals have the same rights to freedom as people do? This links to the moral question of caging any animal and the illustrations lead to thinking of this from different perspectives: the onlooker, the imprisoner and the caged. Overall, this is a lovely picture book that can be read on different levels depending on the age and stage of the reader.

This is a delightful and engaging wordless picture book with a meaningful message – it would suit anyone who would like to explore friendship as well as the value of bees to our planet.

The bee is the main character who teaches a little girl what he needs to thrive, after she catches him in a glass and lets him go out of her window. The bee is in the middle of town, getting soaked in a storm and in need of more help. He returns to the window and this time the girl is not so afraid – she takes the bee in and feeds it honey and water. Many readers will identify with the girl up to this point. But then she keeps him and a friendship blossoms which ultimately takes them both out into the countryside and a world of colour:

Readers of The Promise by Nicola Davies will recognise similarities as the bee and the girl take parts of this natural world back into town and improve the lives of those within it. The wordless story is told entirely through images, beautifully drawn by Alison Jay, which allows for individual interpretations of the characters’ thoughts and motives. By the end of the book, readers will question if it was in fact, the bee who rescued the girl and those around her.