Mark Ludy's Wordless Picture Book, NOAH

My homeschooler and I were given a copy of Mark Ludy's wordless picture book, NOAH, to review for you.

NOAH is a rich resource in many ways. Yes, Noah from the Bible. That Noah.

A picture book without words telling the story of Noah...hmmm...I wondered how it would be done and done well.  The pictures must be detailed enough to tell the story. And Ludy does tell the story and more. Ludy prompts me with pictures to imagine what the characters might have been thinking as God told Noah to build the ark and Noah obeyed.

The pictures are colorful, visually descriptive - simply stunning. The illustrations are fun to view. The moon, the animals (including dinosaurs!) (I did not ever imagine a toucan sitting nearby the builders while the ark was being built), the scenery, the people are all very detailed. Ludy's version of Noah has Noah quite the accomplished draftsman. The 'blueprint' of the ark is one of my favorite pages in the book.

Obviously, the pictures tell the Bible story about Noah's ark. But there are many other uses for wordless picture books in a homeschool, especially with a child on the autism spectrum.

We still use an occasional wordless picture book in our homeschool.

Sometimes, text becomes an obstacle to meaning and comprehension in autism. The reader is so focused on decoding words that there is no room for meaning. Wordless stories allow us to focus on the story itself, on meaning, with comprehension.

In all things autism, perspective taking is a big deal. Theory of mind. Shared attention. Wordless picture books pack a big punch where perspective taking is concerned.

My daughter and I can hold the book together and describe something each of us notices on each page. I learn a lot about her by what she notices. It allows me to spotlight an important part of the picture, a part important to the plot or theme of the story.

Wordless stories allow us to tell the story from beginning to end in multiple ways. We can tell the story as an observer from outside the story. We can tell the story from the main character's perspective. We can tell the story from any and every minor character's perspective.

Wordless stories allow US to compose the text while practicing perspective taking. We can write a version for a toddler using just one or two words per page or we can write for a first grader or, as a stretch at my house, we can write an early chapter book. (We will not attempt the chapter book yet, but we reserve the right to revisit that idea in the future as she is more developmentally ready.)

And in NOAH, Mark Ludy gives us something extra that facilitates our taking a closer look. He hides a mouse on every page for us to find. Sometimes, my teen w/ an autism spectrum disorder rushes through an activity with a goal to be finished (something she learned early in behavioral intervention). We have worked for years - and continue to look for ways to work on slowing her down and taking her time to be reflective. Looking for Squeaker the mouse slows us down and provides opportunities for us to notice details we wouldn't notice if we were rushing through with a goal of finishing the book.

I adore wordless books and the potential they offer in our homeschool with an autistic child. The wordless stories with beautiful illustrations and a familiar story usually become favorites. I think NOAH will be a favorite that we revisit again and again.

NOAH retails for $19.95 (it is on sale for $16.95 at the time I type) and is a sturdy hardback. Peek inside the book here.  

"Disclosure (in accordance with the FTC’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”) I was given a copy of Noah to review. I was not paid for this review and am not obligated to provide a positive opinion.

Wordless + Text Combinations

We continue to use wordless stories to practice reading comprehension. For some children, text is an obstacle to comprehsion, where the children rely on memorization of words in order to comprehend the story. Removing text as an obstacle and "reading" a wordless story is one strategy to practice comprehension (and perspective taking).

I stumbled upon some books that tell the story using some wordless picture pages and some pages with text. It's a really nice combination. Check out the "Olivia" series by author/illustrator Ian Falconer.


I wrote about wordless books HERE and HERE.

Wordless Books, Part 2

When I began to look at wordless books to use with my child, I quickly realized that some of them were developmentally appropriate for my child, and some were not. (Interestingly, the author the autism classroom staff recommended to me wrote several books that were NOT developmentally appropriate. Please note that wordless does not = developmentally appropriate!)

I had assumed "wordless" meant "simple" in terms of plot and story line. In terms of the level of the reader's joint attention, some of the books I scanned required a higher level of joint attention than my child had experienced in real life, between-you-and-me, moments. I wanted her to be able to understand and relate to the stories and draw upon her growing bank of experiences. (I discussed levels of joint attention HERE.)

Last year, I took a workshop for teachers on the topic of guided reading, aimed at those teaching K-2. (I was the only parent/NON-teacher-by-training there.)

We spent a little bit of time on the "why bother" of guided reading, and I recognized some of Vygotsky's work and terms during that portion of the workshop (although Vygotsky was not named). Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist who theorized that developmental skills/functions appear twice in development, first together, between people, and second, alone. Development of self starts as a "we" and moves to an "I" with a "you". He also gave us the term, "zone of proximal development," and in terms of guided reading, that means we choose text that is not too easy, but is not too difficult, for the growing reader. We pick material that has a challenge that is within that child's grasp.

I learned in that workshop a term that I had not heard before: "shared reading". And I learned that "shared reading" comes in development before "guided reading". Why didn't I think of that before? I realized during that workshop that my daughter and I needed to experience more "shared reading". She'd been in public school since she was 19 months old, and I don't remember anyone from school ever asking me if we read to her. [We did NOT read to her because she wouldn't join us. Joining comes first in development -- it's an important part of shared attention, joint attention, and we were beginning to experience that much later in development than is the norm, with the help of RDI(r) .].

When the instructor of the guided reading workshop began to show us examples of leveled readers and leveled text, I had a huge "a-ha" moment. I realized that a lower-level reader could have a plot that required the reader to have a higher level of joint (shared) attention (what professionals in the autism world sometimes refer to as "theory of mind", although I hate that term), than a lot of children with autism HAVE. (I wrote about joint attention here, and my Part 1 post about using wordless books to address reading comprehension is here.)

So, we have a lot of children on the autism spectrum who are quite competent in READING the TEXT, who might even be labeled hyperlexic, but are not comprehending meaning because they don't comprehend that level of "between you and me". A lot of our children need more experiences "between you and me". Leveled readers are NOT leveled on the criteria of "joint attention" or "theory of mind", because there is an assumption that most early/emergent readers have aquired an age appropriate level of J/A or ToM.

And, for several years, the school staff had been pushing my daughter to read text and comprehend it, when she needed more experience in being read TO, in shared reading! ARG!!! (Yes, this played into my decision to homeschool her.)

No wonder reading comprehension is such a popular subject on internet chat groups for parents of children on the autism spectrum!

A friend in college who knew I'd been using wordless books sent me this The Journal of Early Childhood Literacy article, "Young children’s readings of wordless picture books: What’s ‘self’ got to do with it?" by JUDITH T. LYSAKER Butler University, USA.

Excerpt:

"What is most interesting is that the presence of multiple self-positions – the capacity for dialogism in the children – seems to define their narration. In other words, children’s dialogic capacities may be what enables or affords the comprehension abilities described in other work (Paris and Paris, 2003; Sulzby, 1991). That is, the understanding of stories is predicated upon one’s ability to participate in them; a child ‘understands’ stories by first experiencing them as an event of the self, a merger of their personal narrative and the narrative of the book. This seems consistent with Halliday’s (1975) assertion that children learn about language through the use of language, as well as with Rosenblatt’s assertion that the act of reading is an event in which aspects of the reader and aspects of the text come together in unique personal ways (the poem) which represents ‘understanding’."

Children develop a "self that reads" by first experiencing a "we that read". Shared reading comes in development prior to guided reading. And, real life, between-you-and-me EXPERIENCES are important pieces that support all of that literacy development.

In the analysis of this research study, Lysaker observed five "self-positions" as the children participating "read" a series of wordless books to the researchers:

1) Reactor
2) Observer
3) Emerging Narrator
4) Developing Narrator
5) Established Narrator

The "self-positions" grow in terms of what we (as I understand it) refer to in RDI(r) as shared attention and perspective taking. The Reactor, Dr Lysaker descibes, is the child who simply named objects. The Observer commented from the outside. An emerging narrator used first person tense. A Developing Narrator narrated using multiple characters, and an Established Narrator used multiple voice characters: "These children also had a clear awareness of audience and frequently used performance markers to begin and end their readings." Dr. Lysaker points out that the child "readers" must know and understand their audience, which happens to be an area of challenge for children on the autism spectrum.

Lysaker's conclusion includes this statement that talks about the importance of experiences as a player in literacy development:

"Acknowledging the importance of development of the ‘self that reads’ and the self-capacities that are shaped during early childhood may be an important addition to how we define emergent literacy and how we approach young readers and writers instructionally. It seems that if we are committed to helping children emerge into literacy we must find ways to help our young children continue to nourish and develop themselves as complex, dialogic human beings."

Experiences are necessary! And going back and working on books with simple (in terms of shared attention) plots and with little or no text may be necessary for some children. It could be a way to begin to move forward.

Giving a too-complicated book (plot) to a student with an underdeveloped sense of self and a developmental delay in perspective taking is not setting that student up to be a reader!

Do all students in a remediation program/"do-over" need to return to wordless books? I don't know. But I do believe that success in growing comprehension depends on small successes in building developmental foundations and growing them.

So what kinds of wordless books should you choose for your child? And which ones should you avoid, for now? I'll give you a few examples from *our* experience: "The Red Book," Barbara Lehman and "Flotsam," by David Weisner, both had more complex plots, levels of shared attention, than we were ready for when we began using wordless books. We were able to use Mercer Mayer's series about the boy and the dog and the frog, and Jan Omerod's books, "Moonlight" and "Sunshine" were perfect for us. We like Tomie dePaola's, "Pancakes for Breakfast," too.

I'm not an expert on reading, not an expert on wordless books or leveled text, but I can share with you what is helping us at home, and wordless story books are one piece of what we do. Understanding joint attention has been helpful for me, too, as I choose books that support our success together.

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Special thanks to Dr. Judith Lysaker, for permission to share from her work here in this blog entry.

Wordless Books - Part 1

A lot of students with autism are behind in reading / comprehension, or what public schools sometimes refer to as ELA (English Language Arts). As I learn more about autism, what it is, and what it is NOT, autism is NOT a deficit in memorizing and recognizing sight words, but it *IS* a deficit in the dynamic information processing that adds up to "MEANING MAKING", not just reading / comprehension.

A developmental foundation of reading comprehension is COMPREHENSION (meaning-making) BETWEEN PEOPLE.

I read the Michigan Dept of Ed Vision Statement for English Language Arts, and I want what it says there for all of my children...my asd child included...for them to be meaning makers, spoken, written, in all aspects of communication.

From the Michigan Department of Education ELA Vision Statement: "The essence of the English language arts is communication—exchanging and exploring information and insights. We are meaning-makers who strive to make sense of our world. We use the English language arts in every area of our lives, not just the classroom. They help us deal with other people in the world around us. Listening, speaking, viewing, reading and writing are naturally integrated in our attempts to communicate. We continually improve our understanding by using our past experiences, the circumstances in which we find ourselves, what we are hearing, reading or viewing. Only when we understand or when we are understood are we communicating—only then are we using the English language arts."

I am amused by the fact that the Dept of Ed seems to desire this vision for just the gen ed students.

Let me share with you something I learned that illustrated for ME the difference between calling words and actual comprehension:

I heard Dr. Ingersol, a developmental optometrist from Excel Institute speak a couple of years ago about vision therapy. He gave an example, similar to this one, that presented some of my asd child's issues in a way I had not considered before. He told the audience:

"Go to the bathroom at the top of the stairs, look in the white cabinet behind the green towels, and please bring me the box of alka seltzer."

He said that you and I created pictures in our mind, one of the bathroom at the top of the stairs, another snapshot of the green towels inside the white cabinet. We have no problems with this.
Then he gave us a memorization task. He rattled off a list of 20 or so unrelated words to see how many we could memorize. I got exactly FOUR. Some people got six or seven, but no one got more than that. The first four words he rattled off were "the, was, just, inasmuch". There' s no meaning in those words when they're bunched together--they're unrelated.

He said that some of our kids are not creating pictures (the stairs, the white cabinet), but instead they're trying to REMEMBER the WORDS. They can't remember the words in the alka seltzer sentence past "Go up the stairs". After "go up the stairs," they're lost.

When my child's (former) teacher told me that my daughter knows an incredible number of sight words, and can read a book at grade level but can't tell you what happened in the story, it tells me she's not comprehending meaning, that she is not MEANING MAKING.

At one point, when my daughter was still in public school, I was told by an excited staff member that my daughter could remember the last thing that happened in the story. I disagreed, saying, "She's not comprehending. She is remembering the last few words in the book. There's a difference."

(Autism is not a deficit in memorization of sight words. And TEXT can be a huge obstacle for a child who can memorize sight words but not comprehend meaning between self and others.)

Psychologist Barbara Luskin (mother of a child on the spectrum) reminds us: "As parents and teachers we need to think about what our goals are for those we are involved with. Not so much how we teach but what we want a person to know." I want my daughter to understand that comprehension is not about memorizing the words!

We know that babies can interact (early meaning making between people) before they understand words, that thought preceeds language, but for some odd reason, in autism, we sometimes assume with language (spoken) and reading (written words), that meaning making naturally comes along with it. (sort of like teaching a kid to point and assuming joint attention automatically comes with the point-and I'm back to "what is it we want them to know?")

I purchased a selection of wordless books so we could work on story telling together, without the distraction / obstacle of text, so we could focus on meaning making. I'd never heard of wordless books until one of my children (not asd) began to participate in a study at U of M a few years ago, and every time the university students come to the house as part of the research, they bring this same wordless book and ask me to "read" it to my son. It's interesting that every year, the story I'd tell from that same book grew bigger, broader, as I "read" it to my son, based on his level of understanding. I automatically tailor it to where he is. I'm learning with RDI(r) to tailor them to where my asd child is, developmentally, as we re-do the foundation work toward experience sharing (or meaning making) between people.

The University of Google can offer lots of lists of wordless books, and so can major booksellers. Check it out! We like Mercer Mayer's series about the boy, the dog, the frog, etc. Jan Ormerod has some lovely stories.

It's one of quite a few things we do at home to "do over" what was skipped in my child's development.