Are you looking for a book that will please a boy or a girl who is resistant to reading? I’d suggest giving your reluctant reader a book that they don’t have to read.

Just kidding, right? Actually that’s not a joke.

It’s a serious recommendation for parents and teachers to offer wordless picture books to reading-resistant kids. I’ll give you three big reasons why wordless books improve reading skills.

Reason 1: Reading A Wordless Picture Book Lets Kids Practice Important Reading Behaviors

When kids sit down with a wordless picture book, they create the story themselves by interpreting the pictures and imagining the plot in their minds—which is exactly what they will do when they read a book that’s made up of nothing but words.

By absorbing the visual details in the wordless picture books, your child will learn to pick up disparate elements on the page, hold those concepts in their memories, and stitch them together to make presumptions, generate empathy, build expectations, and make meaning. What are they doing? They are storymaking. And storymaking is required for reading comprehension.

Reading picture books may not involve reading words made up of alphabetic letters, but it involves the fundamental behaviors that are required to become fully literate.

Reason 2: In Wordless Picture Books, Kids Learn Story Structure

Wordless picture books may not have words, but they still have plots, structures, complex characters, conflict, resolutions—that is, all the elements of a good story. Learning about the building blocks of a story is an important part of developing literacy.

When kids know what to expect from a book, they’re well equipped to get through a story with challenging words and sentences. If they know there will be tension, but that tension will somehow be resolved, they will be more inclined to keep going all the way to the end as they read.

Wordless picture books help kids understand pacing and that helps set their expectations for what written storybooks are all about.

Reason 3: Wordless Picture Books Help Kids Equate Books With Joy

To learn anything well, there must be a bit of joy in the activity. Learning to read can be difficult, and therefore joyless at times. It can be time consuming, and therefore feel like a chore, especially when there are other, less challenging options at hand (apps, toys, TV, etc.). If you offer kids some fun wordless picture books, however, you’ll be giving them an activity that’s not taxing.

As they go though a wordless picture book, they won’t be confronted with words they can’t decipher. They won’t associate the book with the feeling of joy.