A Big List of Wordless Picture Books That Can Be Used for Older Students in Speech/Language Therapy

(this post includes affiliate links which means if you purchase something following a link on my post, I might get some kind of compensation which I will use to buy more wordless picture books)

Wordless picture books, my loves... I’ve been using wordless picture books ever since I was a baby speech therapist, but this year, I went on a major deep dive with them. I currently work with middle school students, so the books I’ve been using are more geared toward the older student crowd, however you might be surprised just how versatile these stories can be and how they can adapt to a big range of goals and age groups. 99% of the books I’ve used this year have come from my public library and I only had one casualty… Let me tell you that while these clear post-it notes look really cool, they leave behind a sticky film on the page if you leave them in your book too long (my apologies to the glorious civic institution that is the public library).

I consider wordless picture books to be Swiss-army knives… tools that can tackle a variety of tasks. Almost every single goal I can think of can be targeted using a wordless picture book. They naturally elicit spontaneous language which makes them fantastic for gestalt language processors and collecting language samples. They’re accessible to students regardless of their reading level and make it easier to work on story retell and sequencing goals (because they’re already sequenced!). They don’t look like flashcards or other “therapy materials.” Because they can be tailored to multiple goals, they’re great for mixed groups of students. When you use as many wordless picture books as I do, you start picking up on themes and patterns and can start comparing and contrasting them. And finally- book illustrators are incredible artists and just amazingly talented humans. An entire world of art and storytelling has opened up to me (and my students) this year and has just made life better in general.

I’ve relied on the many lists of wordless picture books that currently exist on the internet. I usually walk into the library with a big list- and then walk out of the library with an even bigger pile of books. One book on a list very often leads me to find multiple books by the same author. Searching “wordless books” on your library website is a great place to start. And they’re not just for kids- I’ve found wordless books in the YA section, the graphic novel section and in the “art” books section. I highly recommend shopping your library first (libraries don’t have affiliate links though…) before you buy so you only buy the ones you know you’re going to use over and over again.

My intention with this post is to create a curated list of wordless picture books that I, myself, have tried and can personally recommend to use in speech therapy and to elicit language with your children at home. The age recommendations listed are based on my own experiences and opinions for using these in speech therapy- and very often do not line up with what the publishers have listed as the target audience age-range. I find that middle school and high school students are still open to telling fantastical stories and they can serve as an engaging springboard for more complex discussions and language activities.

Happy story-telling!

Here is my big list of beloved wordless picture books for speech therapy with older students:

Chalk by Bill Thomsen (link here)- good for ALL AGES: Three kids walk to the park on a rainy day and they find a bag of chalk hanging on the playground equipment. One of them starts drawing and quickly learns that this is no ordinary chalk. Whatever they draw comes to life- which is all nice and good until one of them draws a T-rex…

Cover of “Chalk” by Bill Thomson

My favorite of all time. I have purchased this book multiple times for myself (when mine wore out) and for colleagues. I have used this successfully with preschoolers all the way up through super-senior high school kids. This one is particularly good for story-retell and sequencing since it has a very clean conflict and resolution. It has natural points you can probe for prediction skills and making inferences. It’s a fun conversation starter- What would you draw with magic chalk? I’ve paired it with drawing activities on paper and also using (regular… not magic) chalk outside. I’ve used it many times for my students working on /r/ since it’s a story that involves “rain,” “drawing”, “butterflies” and a “T-rex.”

Tuesday by David Wiesner (link here)- good for upper elementary through high school: One Tuesday night, some frogs notice that their lily pads are floating- and that they can make them fly. Follow the frogs’ escapades as they run amok through town- but only until the sun comes up.

Cover of “Tuesday” by David Wiesner

A weird and wonderful story with many opportunities to have “what if?” conversations. What if frogs were flying around your town? What would it be like if another kind of animal was flying all over town? Look up the actual phenomenon of “lluvia de peces” (raining fish) and other actual reports of random animals and debris falling from the sky. What would you do if you looked out the window and saw frogs flying around? What would your parents do? Also another good story to use for making predictions and inferences.

Flotsam by David Wiesner (link here)- good for middle school and high school students: A boy finds an old camera washed up on the beach. When he gets the film developed, he discovers he is just one in a long line of beachgoers to find the camera.

Cover of “Flotsam”, by David Wiesner

This is a more complicated storyline so much better for the older crowd. Great for making inferences and predictions. Great for perspective-taking. Includes an opportunity to talk about the old fashioned technology of getting pictures developed at a “1-hour Photo” place. Lots of details in the pictures to talk about.

Mr. Wuffles! by David Wiesner (link here)- Good for middle school to high school age students. A tiny spaceship makes its way into a home where it is assumed to be a cat toy. Mr. Wuffles (the cat) is very interested in the tiny visitors.

Cover of “Mr. Wuffles!” by David Wiesner

This book has opportunities for imagined dialogue with the aliens talking to each other (the words are written in their language which was indecipherable to me at least). You can have a deeper discussion about the inner lives of our pets or a not-as-deep conversation about students’ experiences with pets. I didn’t do this, but I’ve always had the idea that you could do a game called “cat toy or baby toy” using actual cat toys and baby toys which would be a natural way to elicit descriptive vocabulary and comparing/contrasting. (It would also be an excellent baby shower game for people who have cats…)

I happened upon a New Yorker article about wordless picture books (another list! I will be working my way through it) which linked to an essay written by David Wiesner about the history of wordless picture books (…with more suggestions for more books) which is fascinating. Both articles talk about wordless picture books way more eloquently than I’m doing right now.

Found by Jeff Newman and Larry Day (link here) - good for upper elementary through high school- A girl brings a dog in from the rain and falls in love with it, only to find out it belongs to someone else. We find out she already knows how it feels to lose a dog. (Spoiler alert: happy ending!)

Cover of “Found” by Jeff Newman and Larry Day

This story is adorable and definitely one that tugs on your heartstrings. This is the book that I left the post-it notes in (sorry!) for so long because I used it with my entire caseload for completely different things- story retell, story elements, vocabulary, pronouns, spontaneous language samples, making inferences, perspective taking… The post-it notes had subordinating conjunctions written on them and the students used the conjunctions to formulate complex sentences about the pictures (again- sorry!!).

Spot, the Cat by Henry Cole (link here) - good for preschool through middle school - Follow a cat all over town as it escapes from an upstairs window, narrowly avoiding his owner who is looking for him. Can you spot the cat?

Cover of “Spot, the Cat” by Henry Cole

Great for working with prepositions and asking/answering “where” questions. I used this with students working on multiple-meaning words about the title. Wonderfully detailed pictures all done in what looks like ink pen. I just found out there’s a sequel- Spot and Dot… which I haven’t checked out yet. I keep finding more books and am starting to think there is an endless supply of them!

Journey by Aaron Becker (link here) - good for upper elementary school through high school : A lonely girl draws a door in the wall of her apartment and goes through it into a new and wonderful adventure and ends up with a new friend.

Cover of “Journey”, by Aaron Becker

This is another story about drawings becoming real- so it can be compared/contrasted with “Chalk” (see above). This is also only book 1 of a trilogy. My students spent a good month and a half on these three books. This one has a simpler story line than books 2 and 3 so it will work for the upper elementary school ages.

Quest by Aaron Becker (link here)- Good for upper elementary through high school- Picks up right where Journey left off, the two friends are summoned back to the Journey world by a king in peril who needs help getting back his set of magic crayons and restoring color to his kingdom.

Cover of “Quest” by Aaron Becker

This is book 2 in the Journey trilogy. Definitely much more complicated than book 1 and you have to have read book 1 to understand it. My SLPA picked up this book when she had a few extra minutes left in a session and they were very confused/lost but still interested! There are so many details in the pictures of this book so it’s better for students who can maintain attention for longer periods of time. Great book for targeting inferencing, predictions, descriptive language, complex sentences, sequencing, story retell, etc.

Return by Aaron Becker (link here)- Good for upper elementary through high school. The father of the main character from book 1 follows her into the Journey world and helps her win a battle for good. (Spoiler alert) We find out he’s been keeping his own access to the Journey world a secret!

Cover of “Return” by Aaron Becker

Book 3 of the Journey trilogy. It was so great to get to the last book of the trilogy and have my students remember connections from books 1 and 2. This books is great for inferences, making predictions, story retell, sequencing and descriptive language. The series overall captivated the imaginations of my “cool” middle school students who are very much in the realms of social media and its usual short-form story telling.

Field Trip to the Moon by John Hare (link here)- good for elementary through middle school age students. A class takes a field trip to the moon, but leaves one inquisitive student behind. She meets some moon-dwellers before the school-bus spaceship returns for her.

This is one of three related books- I won’t say it’s a trilogy because you could read them out of sequence and they would still make sense- which all have the same plot formula. A class takes a trip to an outrageous location, a curious student gets left behind while he/she is following his or her own deep interest, the curious student has an interaction with a creature inhabitant of the outrageous location, the school-bus-like vehicle returns to collect the left-behind student and the student reunites with the class. These books are great for story retell because they have clear cut story elements. (Lots of stories don’t follow the beginning, rising action, conflict, solution, wrap up that we’ve been told are universal story elements… that’s another discussion for another day). These stories work well for comparing and contrasting, making inferences and predictions.

Field Trip to Volcano Island, by John Hare (link here)- Good for elementary through middle school age students. A class takes a trip to an island to explore a volcano, but leaves one inquisitive student behind. Before they return to pick him up, he befriends some lava creatures.

Cover of “Field Trip to Volcano Island” by John Hare

(See description above for information about this series in general) Can be used for comparing/contrasting- also look for characters/details that showed up in the other stories. This one is great for inferencing because it really does take a minute to figure out what the student and the lava creatures are trying to communicate about. They end up solving a problem together that makes for great story-retell material. Would be great to use with sentence frames to target complex sentence formulation and/or descriptive language.

Field Trip to the Ocean Deep, by John Hare (link here)- Good for elementary through middle school age students. The class takes a field trip deep under the sea, leaving behind one inquisitive student with a camera. He meets some friendly sea creatures- one of which we might have though was extinct- before being reunited with his class again.

For the most part, I introduced these stories to my students in the order I have placed them in here, however they can be used interchangeably. The featured student in this story with his camera can be spotted (with his camera) in the other books. Like the others, this story is great for retell, making inferences, predictions and descriptive language. I have a couple of students who have a special interest in dinosaurs and so this book sparked a fun discussion about water dinosaurs.

Float, by Daniel Miyares (link here)- Good for upper elementary through middle school age students. A child goes out on a rainy day with a paper boat which doesn’t survive a sewer/drainpipe dousing. He returns to his home where his caregiver dries him off. He emerges after the storm, this time with a paper airplane.

Cover of “Float” by Daniel Miyares

This one is good for story retell, descriptive language and emotions vocabulary. The pictures in the rain are mostly in grayscale besides the child’s rain gear and the color scheme flips when the sun comes out. We talked about feelings/mood words associated with grey vs. yellow. The inside covers of the book have visual instructions for how to make a paper boat and a paper airplane so there’s an obvious built-in activity! I happened to have a perpetual puddle close to my speech room this year that we all tried our paper boats out in. The kids also saw right away that you could use the boat pattern to make a hat with a larger piece of paper.

Professional Crocodile, by Gianna Zoboli and Mariachiara Giorgio (link here)- Good for middle school to high school age students. A crocodile prepares and commutes to work. But what does he do? The answer may surprise you… or not!

Before we even opened this book, we had a discussion about what the word “professional” meant and made some predictions about what we thought the crocodile’s job was. (SPOILER ALERT) Going to give away the ending here- we find out the crocodile’s job is to be a crocodile in a zoo! So he gets dressed and commutes just to take off all his clothes and float in a pool for spectators. This book builds a world where the line between human and animal is quite blurry. It could facilitate a discussion comparing and contrasting humans and animals or comparing and contrasting our world with the world in the book. It’s delightfully world-bending and you could go really deep in your discussions- or just keep everything surface level and describe the pictures.

Churro and the Magician, by Gastón Caba (link here). Good for middle school to high school age students. A bunny named Churro misses the school bus and attends a magic show where the magician leaves his wand behind. Churro attempts to use the wand and chaos ensues- that is, until the magician returns to set everything right again (and bring Churro back to school where he belongs of course).

I found this book in the “graphic novel” section of the library. It has multiple frames per page in a small book so that might be something to consider when working with your students. You may want to only use it with students who you know can sustain attention for longer periods of time and it may be more challenging with a group of more than 2-3 students. This book was great for making inferences and predictions as well as producing descriptive language and complex sentence structure. Could be used as a compare/contrast with “Chalk” (see above) as it involves magic getting out of hand.

Before After by Anne-Margot Ramstein and Matthias Aregui (link here) - Good for all ages. A collection of images that have a sequenced relationship.

Cover of “Before After” by Anne-Margot Ramstein and Mattias Aregui

There are so many ways to use this book- I discover something new every time I pick it up. This is one of the ones I just skipped the library and bought this year because I’d used it so many times previously, I knew I needed it. The title might lead you to think you could do a big activity about the words “before” and “after,” but I find that the pictures lend themselves more to the concepts of “first” and “then.” Example, “First there is an acorn and then there is a tree.” It’s so much more than that though… this would be great for students working on word associations, comparing and contrasting, descriptive language and sequencing. It naturally opens a discussion about “how are these things related?” There are pairs of pictures and longer sequences- here’s two of my favorite examples:

sheep in a field, skein of yarn, hands knitting, snowy day scene with a snowman wearing a scarf

octopus, bottle of ink, pigeon, feather in bottle of ink, feather in bottle of ink again, typewriter, carrier pigeon in flight, airmail envelope, airplane taking off from a city, airplane landing on a remote island

I use post it tabs to mark the images I want to use in advance if I’m doing a structured lesson/activity, but I’ve also pulled it out when we have a few minutes left for an impromptu activity as well. The book is 176 pages long so I’ve never used it all in one session. I love, love LOVE this one.

Inside Outside by Anne-Margot Ramstein and Mattias Aregui (link here) Good for all ages. Image pairs that play with the concepts of “inside” and “outside”

Cover of “Inside Outside” by Anne-Margot Ramstein and Matthias Aregui

I discovered this one when I was ordering “Before After” this year. I was SO excited to see another book from this duo and it did not disappoint- although it hasn’t been out long enough for me to buy a good discounted used copy yet. This is an oversized picture book with pairs of images that play with the concept of “inside” and “outside.” You could do a lesson that focuses just on those language concepts, but my students compared and contrasted the images and talked about how they were related to each other. The last images tie all of the previous images together which is a concept that was over the heads of most of my middle school students- but it might be something high school students could grasp. I LOVE this author/illustrator duo.

Zoom by Istvan Banyai (link here) Good for upper elementary through high school age students.- A series of pictures that progressively zoom out as they go and surprisingly morph into unexpected things/places.

Cover of “Zoom” by Istvan Banyai

This one is fun. I had a few students just not interested at all in the first couple pages but then they got progressively more and more excited as the pictures changed. You start with a rooster… and end up on an isolated island… and then go to space! This was great for eliciting spontaneous language, descriptive language, inferences and making predictions. I kind of can’t believe I’m writing this but I actually have not used the sequel: Re-Zoom - because the used copy I ordered from Amazon was too damaged to use and I forgot about it! I will be returning to it, however, because the original Zoom was incredibly useful for my students.

Little Fox in the Forest by Stephanie Graegin (link here)- Good for upper elementary through high school age students. A little girl brings her stuffed fox to school for show and tell- and when it’s taken, her journey to get it back takes her into the animal world of the forest and ends with her making an unexpected friend.

Cover of “Little Fox in the Forest” by Stephanie Graegin

This is another book with multiple frames per page and so therefore possibly better suited to smaller groups of students who can maintain attention for longer periods of time. It’s great for eliciting spontaneous language, talking about emotion vocabulary, perspective taking, making predictions and inferences. It’s harder for students working on story retell because it’s a more complicated story line- and also therefore better for older students.

Trainstop by Barbara Lehman (link here) - Good for upper elementary through middle school age students. A girl rides a train with her parents and gets off at a stop when the rest of the passengers are sleeping. She visits a place where she encounters tiny people (or discovers she’s a giant person…). Did it really happen though or was it just a dream?

Cover of “Trainstop” by Barbara Lehman

This is a unique, interesting story that was good for eliciting spontaneous language, descriptive vocabulary, perspective taking, inferencing and predictions. It has a fun twist at the end. You can have a discussion about whether the story was all a dream and if it wasn’t, why the author chose to have the rest of the passengers fall asleep.

Rainstorm by Barbara Lehman (link here) - Good for upper elementary through middle school age students. On a rainy day, a boy discovers a secret passage way in his own house to a very different place.

This is another unique story that I used to talk about perspective taking and what you might do if you were bored and had no devices to entertain you. I pulled it out during a week we had rain a few days as a bonus.

Barbara Lehman has quite a few wordless picture books published that I haven’t explored as much. My students were not as interested in her most famous one: “The Red Book” but your students might like it!

TO BE CONTINUED! I do believe this list will be never-ending so look out for a part 2, 3, 4 …. What are your favorite wordless books and how do you use them?

Shift from Ableism to Cultural Humility

I have been going through an unraveling of sorts for the last several years in my speech-language pathologist brain which hinges on the concept of ableism.

There are many definitions of “ableism” on the internet and the one I like best belongs to Rachel Dorsey. Ableism is “the belief that people with typical abilities are superior to those with disabilities.” She has since taken down her content prior to 2023, but she wrote a piece about ableism within the field of speech pathology that resonated with me deeply. Once I was aware of ableism, I saw it everywhere. It was something I was unable to unsee.

My unraveling process started when I sought out the perspectives of actual AAC (alternative, augmentative communication) users in the community. I was attempting to find people in the community I could connect my AAC-using students transitioning from high school into adult life. One resource I went to immediately was the Facebook group “Ask Me, I’m an AAC User.” I came across a post stating that they did not allow any “pro-ABA” comments on their page. If you’re new here, “ABA” stands for “applied behavior analysis” which is prescribed by pediatricians to children, almost by default, when they receive an autism diagnosis. It turns out the AAC users, in that group at least, had some opinions about ABA, a service that many of them had been subjected to. That led me to discover that there was a gigantic community of autistic people speaking out against ABA under a broader umbrella that was the “Neurodiversity Movement.” The concept that a group of people that the medical community blanket prescribes a service to has a big problem with that service blew my mind wide open. The service professions were not listening to the people they served.

The Neurodiversity Movement is of course not just about ABA nor is it just about autism, although I’ve learned many things about both since joining that Facebook group in 2018. The Neurodiversity Movement is ultimately a push back against ableism directed towards those with neurological diagnoses other than what is considered “typical.” It caused a paradigm shift in me not just about the neurodiverse people I support but all people I support. The shift is from ableism- that the non-disabled professional will automatically “know better” than the disabled client, to a place of cultural humility- that the non-disabled professional cannot know more about the disabled client’s experience than the client themself.

I now actively seek out the perspectives of people who have similar communication challenges to the ones my clients are experiencing. I make the client a part of their own treatment decisions (this can look like having an open discussion with a middle school student about his communication goals or it can look like child-led therapy with a 3-year-old- listening to them and changing an activity if they’re not enjoying it). I talk to the client about their own experiences and how their communication challenges impact their lives as a whole. This drives treatment approaches and priorities. This can mean sometimes that a generally-intelligible student stops working on their /s/ sound if they’re okay with it the way it is. It can mean open discussions about what does and doesn’t help an individual who stutters. I also bring up the concept of ableism to all discussions with caregivers and school support teams to ensure that decisions are made which will ultimately empower the individual- not mold them into being indistinguishable from their peers.

The shift started for me with my discovery of the Neurodiversity Movement- and it has changed everything I do. I hold out hope that we can see this shift in our cultural understanding of disability as well.