Triptych: Wordless Wonders

While deciding on which stories I wanted to use for my triptych, I found that it was much more complicated than I thought it would be to choose three particular stories that would all relate to each other in their plots. However, my idea finally came to me when I purchased a new book to add to my library called Flotsam, by David Wiesner. I had never heard of this story before, but was intrigued by it's lack of words, and beautiful pictures to tell a story. In fact, as you will learn soon understand, reading the story made me think of one of the books that I "read" in class one morning from the collections left on our tables. This second book was titled The Red Book, by Barbara Lehman, and also was created without any words. As you may well remember, I chose the story Good Dog, Carl, by Alexandra Day, for my story to write about at the beginning of class. While we were supposed to "write about it and forget about it", I can't help but use it again with this assignment, as I feel it applies well with my two other choices for my triptych.

So what do all of these stories have in common? Well it certainly isn't the plots at all. However, as I mentioned before, they were created without words in order to get the child to create the story for him/herself. I am completely intrigued by the idea of creating books that rely entirely on drawings and pictures to tell a story. As I wrote before about my passion for Good Dog, Carl books, I love how even children who are unable to understand words and text can still understand these types of books. I feel it is so important for children to be able to use their imaginations, and be able to create their own stories, and that these books are a huge way to scaffold that kind of behavior. These three books can certainly be used in a classroom with a wide range of ages in order to exercise the use of our imagination.

The first story mentioned above was Flotsam. This story was created by David Wiesner, and is about a young boy exploring the beach one beautiful sunny day. The story begins with this young boy finding things such as crabs and other sea life, and then is altered when he finds a camera washed up by the waves. Upon developing the film in this camera, he discoveres some amazing photographs of an underwater world that he could only imagine. In addition, he finds a photograph of a young girl holding a photograph of a young boy holding a photograph of another child holding a photograph and so on and so fourth. He stops to take a closer look using his magnefier, but when it can't magnefy enough, he uses his microscope. Greater and greater he magnefies until he can finally see the last child; a boy standing on the beach waving to the camera. Intrigued by what he's discovered, he makes a decision to use the camera to photograph himself holding this photo, and throw the camera back into the ocean to be discovered by someone else. I'd love to ask my students about the amazing pictures that the boy discovered of the underwater world, or what they think might happen to the camera, or what they might have done if they had been the ones to find it.

The second story that I chose for my triptych was called The Red Book by Barbara Lehman. The reason I thought of this story is because it is very similar to Flotsam in that it is a wordless story, written about a young child who finds something that opens up an imaginary world for her, which becomes a reality through imagination. She finds a red book in the snow on the sidewalk as she is walking through the big city towards home. She brings the book back to her apartment in a tall skyscraper, and sees pictures of a young boy on a beach reading a book. However, at a closer glance, she realizes that the boy is reading a book about a young girl in a snowy city, and the little girl in the picture is herself! Imagination runs wild as she takes off into the sky with a bundle of balloons in order to fly to the young boy on the sandy beach in her story. As she flies through the sky, the book falls to the ground where it is picked up by another child who gets to read of the two children's tale. I would love to ask kids what they would do if they were a part of this story, and see what kinds of ideas they would have, or how they would make the story play out themselves. Would the two children meet in the end? Or would the little girl wake up from a dream? Would the third child be able to meet them as well?

The final story that I chose was Good Dog, Carl by Alexandra Day. While this story is very much different from the other two in the story line, it is very similar in that it is a book without words, and allows children the chance to use their imaginations to make the story their own. A family dog is left in charge of babysitting for an afternoon while the baby's parents are away, and the story tells of the wonderful day shared by the two characters, from going for walks on the Carl's back around the house, to playing in mom's jewelry and make-up. The day is magical as the two share an undeniable bond with each other, and very much enjoy each other's company. I would love to be able to talk about the other things that the two might do together, or about the kidns of relationships that my students may have with their own family pets. Depending on what age group I work with, I may be able to ask my students to write their own story about how the day would go if their pet were their babysitter for the day. What kinds of things would you do together? What kinds of adventures could you have?

As we turn the pages of each story, it can be obvious to see the main ideas that the illustrator wanted us to see. However, I feel it is just as important that we take a minute to stop and ask questions about what we don't see and further the learning of children. It is in doing this that we really get children's imaginations going, and the fun can really begin.