The Secret Box

I love wordless picture books!  Wordless books are powerful teaching tools.  Since there are no words, the reader has to rely on picture cues to tell the story.  The Secret Box by Barbara Lehman is an excellent addition to wordless picture books.

A long time ago, a boy hides a box beneath the floorboards in an attic.  Time passes and the the city changes.  One day three children find that same hidden box.  They open it and find pictures, maps, tickets and a postcard of Seahorse Pier.  The kids use the clues to go on an adventure and find Seahorse Pier!  


This is a great book to practice metacognition.  Metacognition is simply thinking about your thinking.  When you read a book, you should always be forming thoughts about what it is you are reading.  Do you agree with what the author said?  Are you confused?  What is going to happen next?  When you read a wordless book it is easy to pay attention to your thinking because there are no words to distract you.  As you read the pictures, use some of the following sentence stems to help you think about your thinking:

• I'm thinking...
• I'm noticing....
• I'm wondering...

Since there are no words, the reader has to infer what is happening throughout the story.  An inference is created when the reader uses background knowledge and text clues to make a prediction.  The text clues in a wordless book will come from the illustrations.  You cannot read this story without creating inferences!  It is impossible!  Some sentence stems to use when inferring are below:

• Maybe....
• Perhaps....
• It could be that...
• This could mean...

Each reader who sits down to read The Secret Box will tell a slightly different story! That is the beauty of wordless books!