The Shadow

Title: The Shadow

Author: Donna Diamond 

Illustrated by: Donna Diamond  

Reading level: Ages 4-8 

Library Binding: 32 pages 

Publisher: Candlewick (July 13, 2010) 

Language: English 

ISBN-10: 0763648787

The Shadow is a wordless book.that is about a girl who comes home from school, she heads up stairs to her room and spread out on the floor to do some drawings. She notices another character in the story. Its her shadow who at first in unnoticed until it slowly creeps up on her. It scares the little girl at first. She runs for cover but then she tells the shadow who is boss! This story is one that has you guess on what the little girl will do next. Its about taking on your fears and standing up to them. 

The character in the story is on we all can relate too. Even though there are no words in the story you can feel for the little girl. She is in her own little world drawing with her dolls when out of no where she sees her shadow for the first time. She at first is afraid but takes on that fear and finally stands up to it. Everyone in life has a fear and this picture books shows how to deal with those fears and over come them. The author wants us to know that "This work is an exploration of the fundamentals emotions of fear,melancholy, and the search for safety(Diamond)." She wants us to understand that fear is alive in everyone we need to take hold of it and stand up to it. The literacy elements in the story are not through words but through the pictures you can feel the foreshadowing of the little girl. You do not know what is coming next but with the girls expression you can guess what she will do next. The allegory is shown through out the whole book. The author wrote this book in a way that we will better understand something which is fear. The whole story is wordless so I believe you could use any literacy element to create a wonderful story. Using a wordless book is a great way to express how you feel about fear. Any literacy element can be used in this book, that is way I believe wordless books are so important, they can impact you in so many different ways.  

The illustrations in the story are so important in this story, because it is a wordless book I believe the images have to make a picture story in themselves. Each page has its own way of creating words with out having words there. The images get you thinking of what words you would use to create your very own story. Some of the images can be scary but the story is about dealing with fear and those images are a great way to talk with your children or students about they ways to deal with fear. The images that Diamond paints she said are "a source of power, imagination, and deep personal identity." This wordless book is an amazing story that I will use in my classroom.

A mini-lesson I would use this book for is one where each child would write their own text to the images. I would ask that they go through the pictures and write about the little girls facial expression, talk about how she is feeling, how she deals with fear, and then write about how they deal with fear. This is a great book to talk about with children who have a lot of fear and ways to deal with it. Overall I love this book and feel it would be a great teaching tool.