2019
WISE Score
A wordless journey through paper collage where a shy girl's move to a new house turns into an imaginary escape behind the bedroom walls.
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Thao Lam’s Wallpaper is a visual stunner that skips the text to let the art do the heavy lifting. It’s the kind of book that rewards a kid who likes to linger on a page and spot the tiny details in the paper scraps.
If your family is dealing with a move or a kid who’s a bit of a wallflower, this is an essential pick. It doesn't lecture about making friends; it just validates how hard it is to take that first step and shows how imagination can be the bridge to real-world courage.
Ideal for the 4-to-8 crowd. Younger kids love the 'find the hidden thing' nature of the art, while older kids can actually appreciate the metaphor for social anxiety.
It models a healthy internal processing of major life changes like moving and social anxiety without being preachy or saccharine.
The paper collage art style is incredible, and the premise—an imaginary world literally hidden behind layers of old wallpaper—is a masterclass in creative storytelling.
It is a wordless picture book for young children with zero content risks.
It builds visual literacy and emotional intelligence by asking the reader to interpret the girl's feelings and the story's arc through imagery alone.
We often fall into the trap of thinking 'reading' only happens when eyes hit text. But according to the Reading Rope framework, language comprehension—understanding narrative, vocabulary, and structure—is just as vital. Wallpaper is a prime example of how a wordless book builds these strands. When a child 'reads' this book to you, they are practicing high-level storytelling skills: interpreting character motivation, predicting plot twists, and connecting visual metaphors.
Thao Lam's style is distinct. The book uses a paper collage technique that gives the pages a physical, 3D depth. The contrast between the muted, somewhat lonely 'real world' and the explosion of color in the 'wallpaper world' is a great way to talk to kids about how our internal lives can feel much bigger than our external ones.
It’s also a fantastic tool for kids with dyslexia or those who find decoding text frustrating. It keeps the desire to engage with books alive while their technical reading skills catch up. Instead of struggling with phonics, they get to be the expert on the story.
The emotional arc here is subtle. The girl isn't just bored; she's paralyzed by the social barrier of being new. Watching her literally tear down a wall (the wallpaper) to find her own voice is a beautiful way to handle a topic that usually gets a much more heavy-handed treatment in children's literature. It’s quiet, it’s intentional, and it’s one of the best picture books released in the last decade.
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