Shadow

Shadow is a wordless picture book that takes you through the imagination of a little girl. The book is read horizontally with the original picture drawn on the upper page. The "shadow" looks like a stencil spray painted on the opposite side of the book. You can read this book any which way as the

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pictures begin to meld together. The shadows begin to create an imaginary world that the little girl gets lost in. She is pulled back into reality and the pictures become realistic on top and a shadow on the bottom again, with a hint of fantasy remaining.

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Wordless books often do not receive much attention or respect. Younger students (or their famiies) want chapter books with words to show off emerging decoding and reading skills. Older students often consider the whole picture book market to beneath their ability and, consequently, something of an

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insult. However, when a book as creative as this one comes along, it needs to be brought to the attention of both younger and older readers. This book reads from top to bottom instead of left to right. We flip the bottom of the page to view the next page. A young girl discovers a closet with a light bulb and she begins to create bird shadows on the wall with her hands and fingers. The hose becomes a snake. Soon we have a room teeming with animals, a forest, and a very scary looking wolf. Readers will find themselves turning back to appreciate the very careful and subtle changes in Lee’s art. Eventually the shadows down below take over the “real” upper page world. Fortunately a “Dinner’s ready!” message (OK, so the book is not completely wordless) returns reality to the picture—or maybe it doesn’t! This is a book well worth exploring in high school or middle school art classes as well as in English classes. Both younger and older students will enjoy imagining along with Lee. This book has a tremendous amount of potential in classrooms, even if the only purpose is to provide a great story for all students, including those who struggle with reading.

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I like this one becuase it teaches students about shadows and imagination. I think it is very important to teach young students to use their imagination!

This book has no words. It's about a little girl using her imagination and playing with shadows in her garage to make a tropical story. Lots of imagination.

A little girl’s imagination gives life to the shadows and come to life as she plays in her cluttered garage. Watch the room transform before your eyes as you turn the pages. Her simple imaginations begin to grow and the line between her world and the shadow world fades away. The only sentence

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that stops the two worlds from complete collision is the call for dinner. This nearly wordless book provides are perfect window of opportunity for children to explore their own imagination. The illustration uses bold lines with charcoal for the girl’s world and stencil-like style for the shadow world with a touch of yellow. As the shadow world becomes livelier with animals, the more yellow shades blossom in the pages. In the beginning, the pages are a mirrored image of each other, one side being the girl’s world and the other being the shadow world. However as time passes, the shadow world begins to change to jungle creatures. The girl seems to have fun in both worlds.

This is a great interactive book for the child and the parent. It shows the possibilities of what children’s mind is capable of and helps boost their imagination. Where will the imagination take you next?

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An absolutely stunning wordless picture book!

This was an awesome story about a little girl who has a big imagination. I loved how this story had no words. Since it had no words students could explain what was going on in their own words and basically tell the story. I also liked it because it showed imagination. Imagination is so important

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for everyone to have and this story shows how fun/ scary an imagination can be. I loved this story.

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Shadow is an amazing tribute to the power of imagination -Suzy Lee's, the main character's and children everywhere. Innovative format, suprising wordless story, great illustrations...

Could we all chip in for moving expenses to get Suzy Lee to move to the US and be eligible for a Caldecott?

I would use this in writing. The class as a whole could write the words for the book to go with the illustrations.

I flipped through Shadow, by Suzy Lee, with my niece. I didn't exactly read it to her, as there were no words to read. But it was fun to see my niece point at the images and oooh and aaah.

For being wordless, Shadow is an amazingly fun book. It begins with a young girl clicking on the garage light,

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which casts dark shadows on the floor. As she plays, watching the shadows, her imagination makes the shadows come alive — until they begin to take on a life of their own. Suzy Lee's art is beautiful and she manages to tell a complete, delightful story with only images and the results are wonderful.

I remember loving these kinds of wordless books when I was a kid. I would flip through them regularly, loving the art and enjoying the story all over again. And I think my niece will love this one, too, when she's a bit older and can appreciate it.

Suzy Lee also has a book called Mirror, which has the same character and same story set up, which looks wonderful. I'm going to have to buy more books by her, because they're great.

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Response -

Curricular connection - Since this is a wordless picture book, I'd use it to teach prediction and inference. The book can also be used to teach creativity.

This book was very different from others, but I enjoyed it. The reason it was different was because it had no words, only illustrations. The illustrations show a little girl playing with shadows and how her imagination can change the shadows into different things. The vacuum cleaner changed into

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flowers and boxes turned into elephants. Another great thing, was that the plot showed how the shadowed started and then gradually changed into creatures. It was not a sudden change from one page to another, it was slow and engaging. The little girl even gets taken into the shadows physically, while the readers get taken into the shadows mentally. The big message in this story is to always have an imagination, which can led you to great stories and fun.

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Interesting play with pictures

I can connect with this book on so many levels. I use to scare myself when I was little because when I laid in the dark my imagination would create scary monster. Another way i can connect with this book is my brothers and i use to play a form of freeze tag turning on and off the lights. I love

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this book, it needs no words to understand. Suzy lee did an amazing jo

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