Look Ma, No Words: 5 Wordless Graphic Novels For Everyone!

Hey bookworm friends! If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a pile of wordless graphic novels worth? Asking for a friend 😜. Anyway, at the start of the year, I was on a bit of a wordless graphic novel kick and I’m only now getting around to sharing my thoughts on them. Below are 5 mini reviews for wordless graphic novels. Despite being geared towards different age groups, I like to think the universality of their silent nature provides something for everyone.

5 Wordless Graphic Novels

How much power does a single man, let alone a single leaf, have in the industrial world?

Leaf is about a young boy who finds a glowing leaf in an industrial world. He travels around the city looking for answers and he meets various people who share their knowledge with him. It explores environmental themes through a hopeful vision of how the natural and urban worlds can coexist together. Unfortunately, I found the narrative hard to follow which diluted the overall message for me. Rather than inspired or enchanted, I simply felt confused at the end. The highlight of Leaf is its gorgeous grey-scale and richly textured art style, with the occasional blue or yellow details.

A man gives his wife and daughter a last kiss and boards a steamship to cross the ocean.

It’s the story of a man who travels to another city to start a better life for his family. He arrives at this technologically advanced, shining city where he can’t speak the language. We follow him as he searches for a job, explores the city, and makes new connections. He’s not entirely alone, as the people coexist with a variety of adorable creatures in the city, and one of them seems to adopt him.

The narrative is seamless and expertly crafted and the art is gorgeous! The illustrations are all the somber brownish colour of old family photographs which grounds the story, but also contrasts beautifully with the whimsical and fantastical nature of this new city. The themes of immigration, family, language barriers, and community shine so bright that by the end I was so invested in this family’s happiness and teary eyed. If you love art or graphic novels do yourself a favour and spend some time soaking up this story!

Richly endearing and full of surprises, Robot Dreams follows an ill-fated friendship between a dog and robot.

Longing for a friend, Dog builds Robot but after a fun day at the beach they discover Robot has rusted and can’t move. After some failed attempts to fix and save him, Dog is unsure what to do. Abandoned on the beach, Robot daydreams of happier times as Dog tries to replace Robot by making and losing a series of friends. This cute book touched on heavier topics than I was expecting, such as loss and the fragile nature of friendships. It was funny, sad, and poignant by turns. Each character goes on their own personal journey, full of ups and downs but they do not end up where you would expect them to which is refreshing. It’s not an absolute fav but I think it teaches valuable lessons to kids about friendship, life, and themselves. Also, it’s a movie too, which I want to watch!

Chabouté’s enchanting story of a park bench was first published to critical acclaim in France in 2012.

In The Park Bench, the creator focuses on the same inanimate object in order to tell a story about people. As people go about their lives, we witness the little moments and big moments through the bench. Joyous moments, heart-breaking moments, growth, death, and everything in between. The simple black and white line drawings let the beauty of humanity shine through. We see a huge assortment of characters use the bench and I thought the creator cleverly communicated the passage of time using the environment and recurring characters. The dog peeing on the bench and an elderly couple who share snacks on the bench captured my heart.

At first glance, The Park Bench, seems like a brick of a book—honestly it’s so long! But once I got to the brilliant reveal at the end, it justified the length a bit in my mind. If you’re willing to commit to the hefty length, and to embracing the beauty of the quotidian, you’ll be rewarded with a full heart!

The beloved wordless fantasy graphic novel is now collected in a single epic volume!

The omnibus edition of Korgi collects 5 books plus short stories. It’s an ode to Corgis, giving the breed a magical beginning and creating lore around the bonds they share with their humans. Korgis is the only book on this list I’ll label as “mostly wordless” because each story is introduced by a magical frog. And the magical frog is a chatty guy, he likes to situate us in each adventure and that’s how we learn the names of the characters. But aside from that, it fits the brief. I enjoyed these stories a lot, they were sweet and funny. The humour was a bit slapstick and sometimes gross but if you know dogs, it makes sense 💩. I fell head over heels for this art style, the detailed line-work and expressive characters made me wish I could take screenshots at every turn. Alas, Hoopla doesn’t allow that so it was a lesson in living in the moment and enjoying something good while it lasts. 🥲

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