Journey

Here at Childrensbookstore.com, we don’t hide the fact that we are fully enamored with wordless books.  We have made a list of some of our favorite wordless books that you can see here.  Journey  by Aaron Becker is one of the most beautiful and well-made wordless books we have seen for a long time. The magic of a good wordless book lies in how much the author delivers, or withholds from the reader.  There are many wordless books out today that tell simple sweet stories that do not allow the reader a lot of space for personal interpretation. On the converse, there are also wordless books that are so thoroughly complete and ornate that the space for imagination is squeezed out with an abundance of color and image.  Journey is filled with beautiful images that draw a reader into the story, but leaves space for the reader to draw his or her own conclusions and imagine a plot. The protagonist begins the story by opening up a new world with her red marker.  The simple room in which the story begins is reflective of the beginning of all adventures–starting with simple idea or motion.  The reader’s imagination is opened up more on each page as she goes to one spectacular vista after another in a boat, a flying carpet and a balloon.  Her adventure encounters adversity and she has to rely on her own ingenuity and goodness to overcome being captured. In terms of a work of art, this book is beautiful and each page is masterful in its use of color, line and light.  There are enough artistic elements in the drawings that the reader’s imagination is stimulated, but not so much that all the creative work is done by the author.  The reader is drawn through the story with the use of red elements; the red marker, a red boat, red flying carpet and more.  The use of the red is reminiscent of Harold and the Purple Crayon.  But, Becker uses the arc of the red color through the story almost subliminally. The book is large, 9.5 in. tall, 10.9 in. wide.  The size is enough that it fills the view of the reader without being unwieldy. We love this book because it balances the difficult task of stimulating the imagination without doing all the work for the reader.  You could give this book to 10 different children and each one would describe the plot differently. Journey is a great accomplishment and we hope Becker’s journey in the world of wordless books is just beginning.