BENGALURU: Wordless books (also called silent books) are exactly what the term implies – books that tell a story, but without printed text. Instead, they rely on illustrations to draw readers into the tales they tell. We humans have used drawings to tell stories as far back as when our ancestors called caves home. Throughout human history, images have functioned as language.
Saul Steinberg, a Romanian-American artist best known for his work for The New Yorker, described himself as ‘a writer who draws’. His book The Art of Living was my introduction to wordless books.
Istvan Banyai’s Zoom is one of my favourite wordless books and it is not about the omnipresent communications platform! It begins with the image of a rooster, which zooms out to show that the rooster is on a farm. Zooming out again, we see that the farm is just a picture in a magazine. It’s a series of zoom-outs so that each time you turn the page, it reveals a new reality, changing your perspective constantly and dramatically. Although Zoom uses no words and tells no story, it will stir your imagination.
The illustrators of wordless books communicate emotion and humour through engaging detail. While most of these books are meant for children, there are some amazing books for adults too. These deeply visual storybooks often demand keen focus and concentration. Their purpose is to incite the imagination, to invite the reader to make up the words that go with the story.
Wordless books were the precursor to graphic novels. Wordless Books by David A Beronä offers a compelling introduction to the first graphic novels ever published. This book covers the innovative output of the major woodcut novels and wordless books that were published from 1918 to 1951. It includes works by Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, Milt Gross, and many others. The images are powerful and iconic, and as relevant to the world today as they were when they were first produced. Beronä places these artists in the context of their time, and in the context of ours, creating an important scholarly work of significance in the burgeoning field of comics and its history.
