Wordless Book Research Articles

Inside the Picture, Outside the Frame: Semiotics and the Reading of Wordless Picture Books

The Publishing world has witnessed a proliferation of wordless children's books during the past 40 years. Books in this genre offer young readers invitations to transact with a whole system of images as they navigate these texts. Using a semiotic framework, this study focuses on three children's readings of wordless picture books and explores the ways in which they assign meaning to a variety of visual signs and cues. The data indicate that the children make sense of wordless picture books by using sense-making processes similar to those used in the reading of print-based texts. Specifically, they construct meaning through the use of prior knowledge and experiences, attention to intertextual cues, multiple perspective-taking, reliance upon story language and rituals, and the implementation of active, playful behaviors as part of the reading process.

Code negotiation in bilingual families: ‘My body starts speaking English’

This study examined patterns of language choice and code‐switching behaviour in the discourse of ten families whose primary home language was Mandarin Chinese. Parent‐child dyads were observed reading a wordless book together, and both parents and target child (age 4.0–6.0 years) were audiotaped during an evening meal. Compared to parents, children incorporated English into more of their utterances, and were more likely to codeswitch in the Chinese‐to‐English direction. Children also complied with the codeswitches of other family members less often than parents, even when the switch was in their preferred direction. Results are interpreted with respect to parents’ and children's differential tendencies to accommodate their speech to their interlocutor, and implications for the maintenance of minority home languages are discussed.

Wordless books: An approach to visual literacy

This is a story about a bear named Goldilocks, and a family of people called The Three Bears. What I mean is that this story is sort of likeGoldilocks and the Three Bears, but the opposite. Get it? Well listen to my story and you'll understand.

Yugoslavia A wordless book

The following text, about' an unusualprotest against the consumercivilisation', comesfrom the Yugoslav News Agency's bulletin, Tanjug Features. Its author is Vuk Draskovic.