Ready to find the wonders of wordless picture books? Let’s slide down the snowy mountain into this picture book pick. Here you’ll find why we love this picture book, speech and language goals and other wordless picture books to put on your bookshelf.

Picture Book Review

A cheerful bear spots a vibrant red sledge in the snow and decides to take it for a ride down a snowy hill. Soon, a merry parade of animals joins the fun, borrowing the sledge for their snowy escapades. The next morning a curious young child discovers mysterious footprints next to her sledge. Whose footprints could they be?

What We Love About This Picture Book

1 – Wordless Picture Books

Red Sledge, also known as Red Sled, is a delightful wordless picture book with simple illustrations set in the snow. Wordless picture books are fantastic as they create an opportunity for you and your child to explore the pictures and make up the story together.

This picture book provides a chance to model speech and language goals at your child’s level, whether you’re modelling gestalts, single words, two-word combinations, short phrases, sentences, signs or speech sounds. You can let your imagination run wild as you interpret the story together.

2 – Fun Sounds and Words

This picture book has fun sounds and words that link to the illustrations in the story. Just like “scrinch scrunch” for the sound of footsteps in the snow, “alley-oop” when the characters are having fun and more, using fun sounds and words helps with catching your child’s attention as you change your pitch and intonation. They may be more likely to copy these sounds as you create a fun interaction together.

Themes and Interests

• Snow
• Forest animals

Speech and Language Targets

Explore some speech and language goals that you can embed in this picture book. Meet your child on their level and focus on modelling 1-2 speech and language goals at a time.

Related Post: 7 Reading Tips for Parents

Vocabulary and Concepts

Red Sledge may be a wordless picture books but you can name and talk about the pictures.

• Forest animals: bear, racoon, moose, rabbit, hedgehog, mouse
• Describing animals: fur, antlers, tail, whiskers, spikes, claws
• Location words: up, down, on, inside, outside, in front
• Action words: walking, sliding, found, looking, thinking, holding, borrowing, crash
• Concepts: cold, fun, scared, confused, big, small, fast
• Fun words and sounds: wee, oh-no, whoa, scrinch scrunch, whoosh, grrr, brrr
• Winter and forest words: Winter, snow, mountain, trees, beanie, boots, cabin, footprints

Language Levels & Wordless Picture Books

Meet your child at their language level using wordless picture books. Rather than asking lots of questions, try making comments with speech and language goals that are meaningful for your child.

Labelling and Describing 

• Labelling animals and places (e.g., “snowy mountain”)
• Describing (e.g., “moose have antlers”)
• Describing actions (e.g., “the bear is riding the sledge”)

Make Predictions 

• What might happen next?
• What would happen if the sledge was not put back?
• What would you do?

Inferring Meaning from Pictures 

• Do you think the child knows who took the sledge?
• How does the child feel?
• How do the animals feel?

Explaining and Justifying 

• How do you know the child is confused?
• Why is it not a good idea to wear swimmers?

Gestalt Language Processing

Wordless picture books are a fantastic resource to use with your child, particularly if they’re a gestalt language processor (i.e., learns language in chunks or scripts). Use the illustrations in this picture book to guide you. Make comments and model mitigable gestalts naturally.

Here are some examples of mitigable gestalts that you can include in your story time. They are not a ‘one size fits all’ as gestalts should be chosen based on your child’s interests and what is meaningful for them.

• It’s snow
• Wanna join?
• wee, its so fun
• I’m cold
• It’s a [animal]
• Let’s see who’s next

Speech Sounds & Wordless Picture Books

• b: bear, beanie, bang, borrow, boots
• m: moon, moose, mouse, mountain
• w: whoa, wee, winter, wind, whoosh, walking, want
• f: far, fast, fun, fall, feet
• r: rabbit, racoon
• s-clusters: snow, scrinch, scrunch, spiky, swish

Book details: Little Simon
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4638-0

Other Wordless Picture Books

Looking for other wordless picture books? Here’s a list:

• Tuesday by David Wiesner
• Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathman
• Flashlight by Lizi Boyd

A Few More Picture Book Recommendations