List of 30 best wordless picture books (reading and writing)

But first, what is a wordless picture book?

Wordless picture books are books without words. Simple as that. More or less.

Because it’s more than that.

Wordless books are stories told only through pictures, beautiful pictures, illustrated by some of the world’s best artists for children and adults.

Readers read pictures like a language. The pictures tell us what’s going on and what might happen next. Readers pay attention to the details in the illustrations and narrate what is happening as we read – in our heads or out loud as we look through the pages.

How do you use a wordless picture book with children?

Are you wondering how to use wordless picture books with your children or students? Believe it or not, you can do many reading and writing activities to develop your child’s thinking skills, reading, writing, and emotional intelligence.

Use wordless books to teach literacy skills like sequencing, making predictions, and connecting to background knowledge, as well as building confidence.

In addition, wordless picture books are also great teaching tools for English learners and young writers. Write lyrics to the story you see in the pages of the book.

As you read with your child, take turns retelling the story out loud. This is great for the youngest readers who are getting the hang of how books work and story structure. Children “read” the story as it unfolds in the illustrations.

Reading the pictures is one of the important things about a picture book – the pictures support the narrative whether it has words or not!

Additionally, this is also a great opportunity to develop new vocabulary as you narrate the story out loud together.

30 Best Wordless Picture Books

+ Literacy Activities

Activities to Teach Beginning, Middle, and End

Even young children, looking through a wordless book, learn that in a story there is an order of events, a sequence. Teach children to recognize the beginning, middle, and end sequence. Before reading, tell the reader that you are starting from scratch. Ask them if they know what the ending is. Tell them the middle part is the middle part.

Prediction: In the middle, ask the reader if they can predict what will happen at the end.

Skip a section: Skip to the middle pages of the book. Ask your child what he thinks about a story with no middle.

Another activity idea is to skip the ending. Ask your child to invent an ending that fits what happened in the story.

Wordless Picture Books to Teach Beginning, Middle, and End

Quest by Aaron Becker
Don’t miss this imaginative and enchanting wordless picture book that will transport you to a magical world. My children and I paid attention to every beautiful detail, and so will you. You will follow a boy and girl with a purple magical bird on their journey to rescue the king and his kingdom. Incredible.

NOPE! A Tale of First Flight by Drew Sheneman
For any child who’s ever been afraid to try something, this book captures the bird’s fear of flying out of the nest with fun and sweet illustrations (with almost no text). In the end, his mother kicked him quickly, much to his delight.

Flashlight by Lizi Boyd
You’ll love this beautiful wordless picture book depicting a boy exploring a forest in the dark. His flashlight illuminates the nocturnal plants and animals…until the animals take the flashlight and illuminate him. Enchanted!

Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie de Paola
In this wordless picture book, an old woman decides to make pancakes for breakfast. She has all the ingredients for the dough, except one. When she left to get the missing ingredients, her dog and cat spilled pancake batter all over the house. What will she do now?

Hike by Pete Oswald
Go on an adventure with the boy and his father out of the city and into the forest. Wordless, joyful, full of emotions and deep satisfaction, watching the beauty of nature from the wooden bridge, and waterfall to the pine forest where father and son planted new trees. Great and sincere.

Wordless Books to Teach Sequencing

Field Trip to the Moon by John Hare
A sweet story about a young artist who gets lost on a field trip. He spends his time drawing, then meets and befriends aliens who join him in his artistic expression. The illustrations are impressive.

Aquarium by Cynthia Alonso
A little girl caught a bright orange fish. She brought it to her home, where she created an aquarium system with faucets, pools, glasses, vases, and pitchers. Then, the girl returned the amberjack to the lake after a sweet goodbye. Wordless with blue and pink graphic illustrations.

Professional Crocodile by Giovanna Zoboli & Mariachiara di Giorgio
Watch as the crocodile wakes up in bed, puts on formal clothes, and leaves the house to go to work. Pay attention to the illustrations that tell the story. Pay attention to the details. Make inferences to predict where he will go. The answer was a wonderful surprise!

No Dogs Allowed! by Linda Ashman and Kristin Sorra
What a beautiful wordless picture book with a very clear sequence of events. The owner of a luxury pub refused a young customer who brought a dog, posting a sign “No dogs allowed”. Many customers with all kinds of animals – cats, kangaroos, elephants – were also turned away. So customers and their animals gathered at the square’s fountain and lemonade stand, forcing the owner to change his mind.

The Snowman by Raymond Briggs

The magical snowman takes a boy on a journey through the snowy countryside. This is one of the most beautifully illustrated wordless children’s books you will read.

Finding Fire by Logan S. Kline
A caveman goes on a journey, evading dangerous wolves and rescuing a baby woolly mammoth. They saw a bolt of lightning and they took the fire on a big tree branch and brought it home. The wonderful artwork captures a brave, goofy-looking boy as well as the world in which he lives.

Activities to Teach Characters’ Emotions 

Children feel emotions. Our job is to help them notice and name those feelings. That develops emotional intelligence.

Download this free faces and emotions printable to help you show your children some different emotions.

After teaching and naming those emotions, we can look for those emotions with characters in wordless comics. Doing this, especially nonverbally, is called making inferences.

Emotional Faces: As you read these books, mention your emotional faces. On a notepad, draw the emotional face the character is feeling on each page – or every few pages – and stick it on that page. Talk about how you know this. What does the character’s face look like? How does that tell you what he or she is feeling?

Acting: Make your face mimic the character’s expressions throughout the book. Can you match the emotions?

Wordless Books to Teach Emotions

Little Fox in the Forest by Stephanie Graegin
A real fox stole a little girl’s stuffed fox from where she let it play. The girl and her friend search for her beloved stuffed fox in the forest. But when the girl found both foxes, she realized how happy the stuffed fox made the real fox, so she let the fox keep her toy. In return, the fox gave the girl his stuffed unicorn. This wordless story evokes emotions that all children can feel – anxiety, fear, empathy, and compassion.

Owl Bat Bat Owl by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick
A family of owls is resting comfortably on a tree branch. Mother owls are disappointed when they are joined by a family of bats that only mirror the position of the backflip. It takes a storm and a mother’s love to bring these two nocturnal families together in friendship.

Draw the Line by Kathryn Otoshi
Told entirely through images, the two boys show interest in one line of dialogue. It was a fun game until the boys got mad. They broke their boundaries and their friendship. One of the boys finds a way to reconnect. Sensual, gorgeous work of art.

A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka
When an older dog accidentally destroys Daisy’s favorite ball, she feels extremely lost and sad. Ultimately, we are reminded by a hopeful ending that sadness does not last forever.

Flora and the Peacocks by Molly Idle
Flora is back with the most beautiful wordless, green, and blue wing-lifting dance experience ever! When she dances with two beautiful male peacocks and a fan, the peacocks become the fan’s territory, making Flora very sad. Luckily, the peacocks realized that they needed to change their behavior for everything to end well.

Activities to Teach Prediction

Inside Outside by Lizi Boyd
If you’ve never read a wordless picture book, you must read this one with detailed illustrations on kraft paper and revealing die-cut images that share glimpses of . . . well, that’s for you to deduce.

I Got It! by David Wiesner
The ball was flying straight to the boy, an outfielder. He screams the only words in this book, “I got it,” only he doesn’t… What happens next will stretch the reader’s imagination. He and his teammates had to work hard to catch the ball. When he becomes small, the size of a ball, like a bird, will he finally catch a baseball?

Tuesday by David Wiesner
This is a special wordless book and is 100% perfect for making inferences. Because this Tuesday, frogs fly on water lily leaves and things will happen that you will NOT expect.

Skunk on a String by Thao Lam
Wordlessly, because there is no need for words in this detailed paper collage story, we follow a skunk tied to the tail of a balloon and drifting across the city. How can he get down? When he finally untied me, . . . he misses flying! So what do you think he’ll do next?

Where’s Walrus? by Stephen Savage
Pay attention to this wordless picture book. The Walrus and the Penguin escaped from the zoo and roamed the city. Can you find them? Together they have many exciting adventures and the walrus even finds love! Great opportunity to pay attention to the illustrations.

The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney
Do you remember this familiar fable? Pinkney illustrates it beautifully without using any text. It is a great choice for writing dialogue.

Chalk by Bill Thomson
This is a story about a rainy day when three friends were drawing with chalk on the sidewalk. . . and the drawings come to life!

Good Dog, Carl by Alexandra Day
When a mother puts her dog Carl in charge of babysitting in this wordless picture book, the dog and baby have a lot of fun around the house.

Flora and the Penguin by Molly Idle
Beautiful periwinkle, white, and yellow illustrations show Flora ice skating and meeting a penguin. At first, she was rude but then she changed her behavior.

The Book From Far Away written by Bruce Handy, illustrated by Julie Benbassat
Exquisite illustrations tell the story of a child who sees a family of aliens on a picnic. When the family leaves an object, the child picks it up. Then he met one of the aliens. The child plays with his new friend and shows him objects on Earth, and gives him a book. When it’s time to say goodbye, both the child and the alien return home with something of each other. Lovely.

Another by Christian Robinson
A rich celebration of imagination and a feast for the eyes and mind! A little girl follows her black cat into a messy world of colorful dots and rectangles, doors, children, and twins – a girl and her cat who look like exactly like them. The white space and repetition of shapes bring a sense of playfulness and freshness.

Little Butterfly by Laura Logan
This beautiful wordless picture book tells the story of a little girl who dreams of flying with Monarch butterflies.

Imagine a City by Elise Hurst
The whimsical artwork comes with an imagined reminder of a more unique world — one with flying fish buses and teatimes with gargoyles. This book would be a great drawing or writing prompt. Choose an illustration. Use it as the basis for your own world.

Red Again by Barbara Lehman
Like the Red Book, this wordless picture book is a story within a story within a story. . . Watch closely as a boy finds a red book, opens it, and sees another boy holding a red book with a picture of the first boy reading it. It’s the kind of puzzling, engaging story that you’ll want to learn through its engaging illustrations.

Lines by Suzy Lee
See the beautiful lines that adorn each page as a lone skater creates swirling designs on the ice. She spins, jumps, slides backward, then suddenly – surprisingly – there’s an eraser mark. Now we see her as an illustration on crumpled paper. Until she returns with new friends, skating on a crowded pond. Ultimately, this wordless picture book is a delightful illusion.

The Little Red Cat Who Ran Away and Learned His ABCs (the Hard Way) by Patrick McDonnell
Watch closely as the red-shirted cartoon cat flips through the pages and finds unexpected silliness with an alligator trying to eat him, a bear climbing a tree, a chicken squawking out of a barn, etc. with each page representing a letter of the alphabet. A unique fantasy story in alphabetical order.

Boat of Dreams by Rogerio Coelho
Wordless with sepia-toned illustrations, this is an imaginative wordless story about an old man living alone on an island. He found a message in a bottle and later sent it back with detailed drawings of an airship. A boy found the drawing and added himself to the drawing. It becomes reality. He went to the old man’s island. Write down the story or use one of the illustrations to spark your own story.