Book Talk Tuesday - The Wonder of Wordless

Please forgive me blogger world.  It has been 4 weeks since my last post.  My daughter's knee surgery, a teammate's maternity leave (Congrats Steph!), and prepping a house for a graduation party (Yikes!) have kept me away.  I am back and trying to find balance!

In June of 2013, I completed my Masters in Literacy.  I have always been a book lover, but this grad program further instilled in me the importance of teaching my students to love books as much as I do. So my hope is that a couple of Tuesdays a month, I will highlight a book or two that my students and I have fallen in love with.

This week: the wonder of wordless books. I was introduced to these two books by Dr. Maria Walther - one of my professors and one of the most well-read people I know.  I admit to being skeptical about wordless books.  But with these two books, it was love at first read.

The 2012 Caldecott winner, A Ball for Daisy is about a spunky, little pup who loves her favorite possession - her little red ball.  That is, until one day, a pooch pal accidentally pops it at the park. Your students cannot help but feel empathy for Daisy and immediately want to figure out a solution for her. The illustrations speak straight to your heart. This book is great for talking about something being done purposefully or accidentally.  It can also be used for predicting, inferring, and problem solving.

Chalk is the story of three friends who find a bag of chalk hanging from a metal dinosaur at a playground on a rainy day. The children soon realize that the chalk they found is no ordinary chalk.

Chalk made me realize the power of wordless books.  When I showed my students the first page's lack of words, one of my students was aghast. "How are you going to read that book without any words, Mrs. St. John?" he exclaimed. "Oh friend," I said, "that just makes this book even more wonderful because I get to tell the story using my own words.  And when I put this book into the library - you can tell it using your own words." Seriously, folks, there were oohs and aahs coming from my class after I said that.  I have not been able to rotate this book out of our classroom library.  It is still one of the most popular books - especially with my boys.  I absolutely adore hearing my students tell the story to each other in their very own words.

Now if you teach older students, please do not shy away from wordless books.  Both of these books would be wonderful for introducing the concept of theme or a book's lesson. The themes/lessons of these books are actually deeper than one might think. Both books would also work well for creative writing.  Instead of telling the stories in their own words, older students could write the stories in their own words.  In the case of Chalk, it also lends itself quite well to students writing about "What happened next?"

I hope you enjoyed my little books talk.  If you are interested in these books, both are linked to Amazon (I even tried to link the pictures, but this is new to me) so that you can immediately put them on your wish list. :)