I always appreciated it when my kids were given books as gifts. Books don’t require batteries. They travel well. And they don’t have any tiny pieces that can get lost or inadvertently stepped on. And, of course, we love books here at the clinic! Using wordless picture books in speech therapy might seem a bit confusing to some, but they're actually one of the best tools we have when evaluating skills and working with kids on all sorts of speech and language goals. According to our SLP Laura Holden:
"Not only do wordless picture books allow you to exercise your creative muscle, they provide many receptive and expressive language opportunities as well. In speech therapy, we use wordless picture books to target vocabulary-building, narrative development, story retell, sequencing and temporal terms, describing, prediction and inference, perspective-taking and reading nonverbals, answering wh-questions, and so much more."
With that in mind, I asked Laura to compile a list of her favorites.
The 14 Best wordless picture books for speech therapy
- Chalk by Bill Thomson
- Flashlight by Lizi Boyd
- Flotsam by David Wiesner
- Tuesday by David Wiesner
- Good Dog, Carl by Alexandra Day
- Goodnight, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann
- Journey by Aaron Becker
- Rainstorm by Barbara Lehman
- The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney
- The Snowman by Raymond Briggs
- Wave by Suzy Lee
- Deep in the Forest by Brinton Turkle
- Little Fox in the Forest by Stephanie Graegin
- The Adventures of Polo by Regis Faller
A few of the books we received when my kids were babies are on Laura's list, including Good Dog, Carl and Goodnight, Gorilla. I’ll confess to feeling a bit confused about them when we received them -- they have zero words, after all! There’s so much emphasis on reading to your kids, so how could these books really be reading? Well, we sat down and “read” these books, and not surprisingly, they became our favorites too. So, next time you're looking for a book to work on speech at home, are at the library with your child, or are shopping for a gift, consider a book without words!
