Wordless Picture Book: The Hero of Little Street

Title: The Hero of Little Street
Author: Gregory Rogers
Publication: 2012

This book is about a little boy who is chased by bullies into a museum and then taken back in time, with a cute dog by his side, to the streets of Holland. Here he encounters some problems but manages to make it back in today's world and fight off the bullies with a little help from his friends he met in the past.

I felt like I was reading a comic book because of the way the pictures are arranged on the pages. There are little squares across and down the pages to show different things happening over time. The previous book I read had one picture for the whole page, so I found it interesting that even among the genre of wordless books, there are many different ways to tell a story.

One of the most exciting things I liked about the book is that each page develops a plot and you want to keep flipping to the next page to see what happens next. For example, the little boy is at the museum and a dog comes out of a painting, and he is playing with him. There are at least 25 different square comic-book type photos of him playing with the dog on two pages of the book. As a reader, you want to flip to the next page to find out what happens with him and the dog.

He organizes his book almost like one of those picture flip books, where you quickly flip through it and it looks like the character or picture is moving. Almost like a mini-movie. Supposedly that's how they started making movies in the first place. In comparison to reading a normal picture book, this type of imagery makes the reader use a whole different side of their brain to read. He or she is both looking at the picture but also trying to interpret from it, what is happening. It's visual and mental all in one. There are no words to guide you along the way, so he or she must pay close attention to what the pictures portray.

I found it enjoyable to read this type of book and felt like I was almost watching a soundless film and following the plot to its completion in anticipation. The plot was very interesting, and I loved the way in tied the plot in with the ending of the story. The main character jumps into a picture of the past in the museum, and uses a flute to call his dog. He also uses this same flute to heard a pack of dogs to fight off a mean butcher. Then, back in present day, he uses this same flute to fight off the mean bullies by calling the pack of dog to attack them. I thought this was a brilliant way to end the story and bring the plot to completion.