Co-Constructing Stories: Sharing Wordless Picture Books with Preschoolers

Abstract

“A wordless book doesn’t have the author’s voice—the text—telling the story. Each reader tells it in their own way.”

In this quotation, three-time Caldecott Medal recipient David Wiesner vividly describes the opportunity that wordless picture books provide for the reader to create their own story. The term “wordless picture books” is often used to refer to picture books completely without words throughout the set of illustrated pages, and “nearly wordless” is used for picture books presenting only a few written words across the book.