To Stir Up a Child’s Curiosity, Try Picture Books Without Words

Kids can dream up endless stories to go along with the pictures.

Wordless picture books allow children to use their imaginations and experiences to create their own stories. New Africa/Shutterstock

There is something truly magical about wordless picture books. The images captivate children’s senses, stir up curiosity, and spark imagination. Readers are drawn into countless new adventures because every story is new and unique.

Introduce your children to the wonderful world of wordless picture books by borrowing some of the classics from your local library and reading them aloud. Start with some of these all-time favorites: the Good Dog, Carl book series by Alexandra Day, “Pancakes for Breakfast” by Tomie dePaola, the A Boy, A Dog, and a Frog series by Mercer Mayer, and the Flora book series by Molly Idle.

As you read, point out what’s going on in the illustrations. Show lots of expression, use different voices for each character, and act out the different scenes. Make predictions, ask questions, and encourage your child to do so also.

After you’ve read several books together, help your child to choose some that interest him or her and watch as your child creates story after story all while developing and strengthening essential academic and social-emotional skills. Now, let’s look at some of the ways these special books encourage and enhance learning.

Help Develop Literacy Skills

Countless adventures await your child inside the pages of a wordless picture book, and every adventure yields countless opportunities for your readers to develop and strengthen essential literacy skills.

As your child becomes more familiar with these books, he or she will begin to recognize that there’s a pattern to the stories—a beginning, a middle, and an end—and that the child is in charge of how the story begins, evolves, and ends. This is big because it builds confidence. And that confidence will help the child become a stronger reader and, eventually, a strong writer.

As your child’s storytelling skills develop and grow, his or her vocabulary will grow by leaps and bounds. Because the illustrations in these books prompt conversation, your child’s communication and comprehension will improve exponentially.

The engaging illustrations challenge kids to think critically; readers will learn to make inferences based on visual clues and practice predicting outcomes.

Strengthen Problem-Solving Skills

Without the story being spelled out in words, children are free to help the characters solve problems. Using a combination of their own experiences as well as their everyday life observations, kids can try out different solutions each time they tell the story.

Encourage your kids to be creative; even a silly or unusual solution or ending to the story shows that they can work through the process.

Spark Imagination and Creativity

Children’s days are filled with imaginative play as they explore and discover new things every day. Imagination leads to creativity. So, give your child some delightful wordless picture books about animals, nature, family, everyday life, and whatever subjects interest him or her, and watch as your child begins to create his or her own unique stories.

Encourage Children to Talk About Feelings

In the award-winning book “Wolf in the Snow” by Matthew Cordell, a little girl and a wolf cub get lost during a snowstorm. In “Fly!” by Mark Teague, a baby bird is afraid to leave the comforts of the nest and fly out into the world. And JonArno Lawson’s “Sidewalk Flowers” shows children the beauty and value of kindness.

These books address common emotions that most children understand—fear and kindness—and can prompt discussions about feelings that your child may have. Knowing that other kids (and baby birds) feel the same way, your child may be more comfortable expressing feelings.

Inspires a Love of Reading and Art

The beauty and simplicity of wordless picture books can help inspire a love of reading and an appreciation for art.

If you have a beginning reader, a struggling reader, or a child who is simply uninterested in reading, these books are an excellent motivational tool. Give your beginning and struggling readers a book with no words; they’ll be so relieved to see that they don’t need to worry about sounding out words or differentiating between homonyms. For uninterested kids, let them choose books that reflect things that they enjoy.

There are wordless picture books for all ages, even older, veteran readers, so you might just find yourself in need of a bigger library book bag. Visit the Speech and Language at Home website for categorized book lists.

The artwork in these books is characteristically awe-inspiring; the illustrations might be simple or elegant, grayscale or colorful, playful or serious—but regardless of the artistic style, the illustrations elicit emotion. Your kids will feel, react to, and quite possibly fall in love with art.

Our first wordless picture book was a gift for our young daughter’s birthday. I always marveled at the countless stories she dreamed up based upon a single book. These books are indeed a passport to myriad magical journeys and learning experiences.