Have you ever discovered the sheer joy that a wordless book brings? To be able to look at pictures and formulate your own story? I tell you, it is SO MUCH FUN. To sit with a wordless book like “The Fish and the Cat” and tell any old story you choose…it’s a great thing. And then to flip it around and let the child tell the story to you? AH! THIS I LOVE! I love helping children learn to tell their own stories, and having a prop book just helps them along the way you know?
About the book:
The Fish and the Cat is a playful story of pursuit between a cat and pet fish that starts in the house, moves through the neighborhood, and ends in the sky with a chase around the stars and the moon. This wordless picture book, full of action and humor, encourages children to create their own stories and adventures.
Marianne Dubuc brings to life the cat and the fish, using shades of black with splashes of orange-red for the fish. We are privileged to follow the fish and the cat on their journey through the world and even to the moon!
What kind of adventures do you think one fish and one cat could get into?
Geared for ages 4 and up, this hardcover book, with mostly black/white illustrations, is filled with easy to follow illustrations, making it easy to concoct an adventure for fish and cat to get into.
My Thoughts:
I LOVE, dearly love books like this. To be able to sit down with a child with a book in hand that has no words, just pictures to spark conversation and story. It harkens back to the days when I would ask children I was babysitting to give me three words, any three words I would make a story from them. We had SO much fun together it was simply delightful.
The simplicity of the drawings leads to further flights of fancy as I’m not distracted by too much in the illustrations, or I can simply add something not yet seen, only to be imagined. I simply adore the creative process wordless books like these lend themselves too.
One time for my homeschool co-op I taught a story-telling class. I brought in all my story telling props… like story cubes, picture card deck, ghost story box, grammar fish and more. We had a lot of fun using these aids to tell stories and to learn all the parts of a story. A book like The Fish and the Cat would be a welcome addition to my resources. Wouldn’t it be fun to give this book to a bunch of 9-12 year olds and see the story they would each come up with? And then share how they came up with it? Simply marvellous.
Or you could even make it simpler and have a story time with 6-8 year olds… that could be a blast don’t you think? Helping creative minds learn how to tell a good story?
I hope that you are as delighted with this book that I am. Wordless books can be a bit disconcerting at first, but once you discover the joy of telling your own story, or in listening to a child tell their own story, you will find yourself hooked. 🙂
The Fish and The Cat
Marianne Dubuc
Princeton Architectural Press
Hardcover, Wordless Book, Ages 4+
at least 60 pages (I kept losing count)
Wordless, storytelling, creative
