Wordless picture book number 3
When Night Didn’t Come by Poly Bernatene is a wordless picture book which offers a considerable level of challenge to read as well as being a visual feast.
The story tells of a village when the sun goes down and the panic when the moon doesn’t rise. There are wonderful pictures of the mechanics of making the moon rise with villagers pulling up large bags of stars and throwing them into the sky.
The colours used in the pictures are rich with glowing oranges set against darker blues, greens and purples giving a slightly theatrical, if not magical feel to the story. It is this element that reminds me of Leon and The Place Between by Grahame Baker-Smith. In fact it would be wonderful if children could tell the story of night not coming in the style of Leon and The Place Between. The language in that book is rich in patterning with a magical air about it.
I think this book would be most suitable for Yr4 children, particularly the imaginary worlds/fanstasy unit of literacy. Wonderful!
January 25th, 2012 at 7:30 pm
In this book you could just use a double page spread to develop the use of colour in writing to suggest atmosphere.
A goog page to use would be 5 pages from the end where one page shows the whole town and then the other has 3 frames showing the moon going down. The colour and light would really add to the description of the place.
You could also look at how paragraphing can add pace by writing a longer paragraph about the picture that covers the whole page and then shorter paras detailing the moon going down.