Wordless picture books are great for many reasons. They emphasize art, provide important literacy skill-building opportunities for young children—such as storytelling and context recognition—lengthen attention span, and, most of all, are a great source of imagination. In some ways, they remind me of the Rorschach Test (ink blots) that professional psychologists use. The open-ended nature of the test allows subjects to state a wide range of observations.
Wordless children’s books rely on illustrations to tell the story and contain little or no text. They are a prime example of the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. To me, catalogs, photo albums, and travel brochures are examples of wordless books, even though they are not usually thought of that way.
