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4 Fabulous Wordless Books for Young Adults

We've seen some great classroom projects done with wordless books. Teachers have integrated them into art and writing projects.

We, however, just read and enjoy them.



The Arrival
by Shaun Tan

GoodReads::: 4.48 average rating — 3,375 votes

**STARRED REVIEW** School Library Journal
**STARRED REVIEW** Book List

In a heartbreaking parting, a man gives his wife and daughter a last kiss and boards a steamship to cross the ocean. He's embarking on the most painful yet important journey of his life- he's leaving home to build a better future for his family.

Shaun Tan evokes universal aspects of an immigrant's experience through a singular work of the imagination. He does so using brilliantly clear and mesmerizing images. Because the main character can't communicate in words, the book forgoes them too. But while the reader experiences the main character's isolation, he also shares his ultimate joy.

  • Hardcover: 128 pages
  • Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
  • ISBN-10: 0439895294
  • Look Inside
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Topics to discuss:

* Change and New Experiences
* Family
* Immigrating
* Prejudice/Tolerance
* The Will to Survive
* Wars and Conflicts

*What images did you find most striking
*What images evoked strong feelings



The Middle Passage: White Ships/ Black Cargo
by Tom Feelings
John Henrik Clarke (Introduction)

GoodReads::: 4.42 average rating — 45 votes

The Middle Passage is the name given to one of the most tragic ordeals in history: the cruel and terrifying journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean. In this seminal work, master artist Tom Feelings tells the complete story of this horrific diaspora in sixty-four extraordinary narrative paintings. Achingly real, they draw us into the lives of the millions of African men, women, and children who were savagely torn from their beautiful homelands, crowded into disease-ridden "death ships," and transported under nightmarish conditions to the so-called New World. An introduction by noted historian Dr. John Henrik Clarke traces the roots of the Atlantic slave trade and gives a vivid summary of its four centuries of brutality. The Middle Passage reaches us on a visceral level. No one can experience it and remain unmoved. But while we absorb the horror of these images, we also can find some hope in them. They are a tribute to the survival of the human spirit, and the humanity won by the survivors of the Middle Passage belongs to us all




Topics to discuss:

* History
* Prejudice
* The Will to Survive

*What images did you find most striking
*What images evoked strong feelings




Blood Song: A Silent Ballad
by Eric Drooker

GoodReads::: 4.04 average rating — 157 votes

**STARRED REVIEW** Publishers Weekly

Once upon a time a young girl went down to the river to fetch some water. What she found when she returned home, and what she did to survive, no ordinary tongue can tell. In a realm beyond words, Blood Song is a moving pictorial journey through an island forest to another island on the far side of the ocean, where the secrets of the girl's past and the secrets of an unknown future await




Flood! A Novel In Pictures
by Eric Drooker

GoodReads::: 4.17 average rating — 144 votes

**Winner of the American Book Award**
**New York Times notable book of the year**

An American Book Award winner and an Editor's Choice of the New York Times, Flood! is the powerful first graphic novel by Eric Drooker, frequent cover artist for the New Yorker. Flood! is a modern novel written in the ancient language of pictures, with an expressionist, film noir edge.