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Zoom is a picture book without a single word or even a narrative. There is no story; just pictures. Open the first page and you see a drawing of some red triangular shapes over a white background flecked with blue. What is this? Turn the page and you find out. The image has backed up and you see the red triangles were actually part of a rooster’s comb. Flip the page again and the next image has backed us up further. Now we see two young kids looking through a window at the rooster. Flip more pages and soon we see we’re on a farm. No big deal. We see pictures of farms all the time. But turn a few more pages and suddenly we’re not on a farm at all. It’s a model of a farm, a toy farm. Flip again and now we see it’s not a toy farm at all, but actually a picture of a toy farm being held in someone’s hand. And so it goes. As we flip through the pages our perspective changes, our truth changes. When we see a farm we have one reality; when we see a picture of a farm it’s an entirely different reality.
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I love picture books. Contrary to popular assumptions, they are not just for little kids. I recommend picture books to middle and high school teachers to use with their students. Within the genre of picture books is a kind of tiny sub-genre of wordless picture books. So, since I’m writing about a few dazzling wordless picture books that are great for older readers, here are five more books with not a single word that will shake up your mind and bring some wonder to your eyes:
Flotsam by David Wiesner
Home by Jeanne Baker
The Flower Man by Mark Ludy
The Arrival by Shaun Tan
Why? by Nikolai Popov
1 comment :
Well, this sounds quite interesting. I'll have to find a copy.
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