As a picture-book writer, but not an illustrator, I can say this: wordless picture books stand tall as the medium’s purest expression. If you don’t believe me, ask Charlie Chaplin what he thought about the difference between silent movies and talkies. “Dialogue, to my way of thinking,” he once observed, “always slows action, because action must wait on words.” That’s true of picture books, too. Ditch words (sniffle), gain immediacy.
The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, in Amherst, Massachusetts, has a gorgeous, provocative, and just plain delightful exhibition devoted to the subject, featuring works by 22 author-illustrators. My flickering-silent-movie comparison notwithstanding, many of the works in “Speechless: The Art of Wordless Picture Books” occupy the cutting edge of children’s publishing, and no one here is looking in the rearview mirror.
