The Only Child

Week 3 Wordless Picture Book 3:
The Only Child
By: Guojing
Published: 2015

This is a strange little book. It would bring about so many great discussions in the classroom. The author states in her note at the beginning that this book was inspired by the loneliness she experienced as a child due to the one child law in China. She was constantly left home alone while her parents worked, which left her nothing to do but sit alone and imagine. The illustrations are mesmerizing and the book reads a bit like a graphic novel. The scenes are so detailed and you can feel the emotions radiating off the page in each scene. The grayscale illustrations make for a melancholy, yet dreamy tone to the book, which is very accurate. 

This book would be an interesting one to use for an activity such as the one we completed in class with an illustration from A Boy Called Dickens by Deborah Hopkins. In order to get our thinking started about a certain topic, we looked at an illustration and talked about what we saw. The teacher would only provide neutral comments that stretched our thinking and encouraged us to explain why. This book really lends itself to an inferencing lesson. There is so much room for imagination, and this would make for a fun open ended lesson. It could also be used as an introduction about China's birth control policy and how it impacted the children and families.

While this book may not be at the top of my list, it is definitely one I will consider getting for my classroom library. I give The Only Child 3.5 whimsical stars.