Wordless picture book number 2
Fans of wordless picture books will be familiar with Jeannie Baker’s work; Window, Where the Forest Meets the Sea and Home. The book of hers that I would most like to use in a literacy sequence is Mirror which I think fits very well with the Yr5 literacy unit stories from other cultures.
The book opens out to show two stories, one on either side of the cover. Each book tells us the story of a child and their family, one living in Australia and one living in Morocco. I think the book works best if you turn the pages of each story at the same time and read the two stories together comparing and contrasting what you can see and what you understand.
The images are created in Baker’s normal style, collage, and are packed full of detail that takes a while to observe fully. The stories do cross when the Moroccan father travels into the market to sell a carpet and then the carpet is collected and placed in the Sydney home. A way, I suppose, of asking us to consider where the things we buy come from and that we are linked in all sorts of ways. It would be a great discussion with children to consider all the different ways that the title Mirror is reflected in the book.
There are several websites with teaching ideas for using this book. Walker Books has a set of activities which are worth dipping into, particularly as they were drawn up with Jeannie Baker. I would use the book to retell one of the stories but I would ask children to tell it in the style of The Day of Ahmed’s Secret by Florence Perry Heide and Judith Heide Gillilan. The writing in this book is rich with description and quite lyrical. Whenever I have used this book with children they are always really surprised by the secret, it being such an every day act in their own lives.
