When pictures are worth a thousand words: Using wordless stories in the HS English classroom
- Miss. Songey
- Feb 24, 2021
- 5 min read
Who would have thought that books with no words had a place in the high school English classroom—picture it: teenagers, handed the most literal take on a picture book that exists?? I mean, the audacity! Right? English class. Words. Elaborate passages that carry our students back through time. Magical lightbulb moments when they are introduced to Shakespeare. Picture books [insert scoff here].
Well, let me cut to the chase. I will stir the pot. Time to fan the flame. And add some spice. Some of my professional peers out there in academia will probably clap back. But NeWsFLASH: WORDLESS STORIES WORK!!! And because we already went there, might as well throw in: SOMETIMES THEY WORK BETTER THAN SCRIPTED STORIES!!!
Hear me out…
Let’s look at Drawn Together and I talk like a river. Now, the latter does have text to accompany the magnificent illustrations, but I want to focus on what we can do with the wordless story that is captured nonetheless. In both of these texts, the story would be incomplete without the illustrations and the wordless features. They could have been told in a page or so of text because both stories are based on memories that were not particularly adventurously eventful; however, by using illustrations and wordless techniques to slow down time and capture the full experience, the final products were turned into something much more touching and much more meaningful.
Drawn Together is about the distance that is caused by the language barrier that separates different generations within a family; within this story, Minh Lê and Dan Santat emphasize how great that distance can seem, even when two people are sitting at the same table. Presenting this story as a series of illustrations embodies the characters’ inability to communicate with words and emphasizes how central drawing art became for this relationship between a grandfather and his grandson. They wove stories together and brought different skills to life on the page where words didn’t interfere with them, which is mimicked in the presentation of the story. This book tells a story that can transcend across languages. Instead of restricting the text to a single language, the author and illustrator use techniques that feature expressive facial expressions and body language, specific sensory details, and an aesthetic transition depicting two stories and perspectives merging into one. It is this last feature that I want to look at more closely.
But first, I have to introduce another magical book that relies heavily on its wordless story, at least as much, if not more, than the scripted story that accompanies the illustrations. I talk like a river is a story about a boy who happens to have a stutter, which causes him distress because of the conflict he faces in his day to day life; he wants so badly to share all of the beautiful words that gather in his mind over the course of the day but is held back because his mouth doesn’t want to cooperate. Written by Jordan Scott, based on his own experience, and illustrated by Sydney Smith, the story unfolds and invites the reader into the mind and heart of Jordan as a young boy coming to terms with his stutter. In a slightly different way from Drawn Together, this book also emphasizes the distance that language causes between people, yet similarly, I talk like a river creates a text that transcends beyond spoken language using illustrations and imagery to capture Jordan’s experience. Jordan begins to understand and accept himself and the way he talks when his father takes him to the river and points out the similarities between the fierce, uncontrollable movement of the water and the fierce, uncontrollable nature of Jordan’s words. This dawning acceptance that Jordan begins to experience is most beautifully represented by the visual aesthetics that change over the course of the text. It is this feature, this powerful transition that could never be replicated using words, that appears in both books and transforms a story about language barriers into an experience where language ceases to be a barrier for our authors, artists, and characters.
In Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing through Children’s Literature, Lynne Dorfman and Rose
Cappelli introduce exercises where students focus on illustrations to capture the details in a story. Though they suggest starting with images as a source of inspiration for stories, the approach would be just as applicable if students were encouraged to use other mediums to tell their stories. This approach emphasizes the value that details add to a story and the effects of using the “show don’t tell” strategy within a story. With these two texts, I want to emphasize the use of layout and the aesthetic decisions that show this movement from characters’ experiences at the beginning to their experiences at the end. In both Drawn Together and I talk like a river, illustrations start out as compartmentalized snapshots on the page; however, as characters’ overcome the distance that is created by language barriers and challenges, the illustrations merge into full page spreads that envelope and embrace the characters. This representation is symbolic in itself such that both stories capture an experience where spoken language only served to separate characters and keep them contained by the challenges that language presented. But, we know that language is so much more than spoken words. By relying on the illustrations and the layout of said illustrations, the story literally comes alive as the pictures on the pages transition and move to tell the story itself. Words are put on the back burner here, so to speak.
Notice how most of the images in the first half of I talk like a river, Jordan's world is very segmented; it gives the reader the impression that he sees himself as separate, or distant, from the world around him. Same with Drawn Together, the perspectives from the grandfather and grandson are separated and physically, the way the pages are laid out, disconnected. But in both stories, the characters merge together with the world and people around them as language becomes less of a barrier between their shared experiences and surroundings.
Using these two texts in the high school English classroom, I would invite students to consider what the pictures can tell us that would otherwise be downplayed or misrepresented if the story was told in scripted text. We would look at techniques for building setting and incorporating details from all five senses to capture the experience. And, we would look at transitions and movement and how both contribute to the overall purpose of the story. We may even debate about whether wordless stories or traditional texts are more complex, perhaps serving as a nice transition to a text like Ken Liu’s Paper Menagerie, where students can compare and contrast how language plays a role in relationships and how that is represented strongly and weakly across the three texts.
Sounds to me like pictures might actually be worth a thousand words (of student engagement) in this case.
XO - Miss S.
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