Chalk

Chalk by Bill Thomson was the only one of the four wordless books that I read with my daughters, and they absolutely loved it. At first I started by talking about the pictures, but slowly it shifted into telling a story. When I was finished my five-year-old asked me to read it again. The second time I read it more like a story and with more expression for individual characters since I had a better understanding of the big picture. Then, my eight-year-old wanted a turn reading it, followed by my five-year-old, who especially loves to play with different voices.

In the book three kids are walking in the rain. They spot a gift bag hanging from a t-rex at the park (as shown on the cover) and discover that the bag contains chalk. It does not take them long to realize that it is not just ordinary chalk as they discover that whatever they draw on the concrete becomes reality. Their wonder quickly turns to horror as one of the drawings leads to a dangerous scenario, making readers want to flip the page to see just what will happen.

As we sat on the couch after school, flipping through the pages and delighting in the illustrations four different times, I thought more about the value of wordless books. My youngest is still emerging as a reader. Though she knows some sight words and is able to "read" familiar books or books with a lot of patterns, at times I can tell that she doesn't quite feel a part of the reading club yet. She absolutely loves books and enjoys "reading the pictures" but at times I can tell that she can't wait to be able to read the words by herself just like her sister. With a wordless book, the three of us were on equal terms. My youngest was not worrying about not being able to read the words yet, as she was able to focus on the value of creating a story based on the pictures.

An additional benefit is the value in oral rehearsing for writing development. By allowing for multiple variations of the story and developing details about different characters and events, wordless books can support creativity with storytelling. For primary students in a writer's workshop setting, having wordless books in the classroom can help them to foster a higher value for telling a story solely through pictures, especially when that is their stage of development. I am also thinking about the possibilities for collaborations between older students and primary students. For example students from older grades who are able to write stories, could study wordless books as a genre study, create their own books with the younger students as their target audience and then share them with kindergarten or first graders.So many possibilities for wordless books...