Picture books for every little moment

Why it worksA lonely girl draws a red door on her bedroom wall and walks through it - and because there are no words, the child does the narrating and you do the listening, which reverses the usual bedtime arrangement entirely. The red crayon is the only red thing in the book, so even a three-year-old can follow the plot by hunting for it.

Worth knowingThere is no text at all, so this is not a read-aloud - it is a look-at-together, and it takes as long as your child wants to talk. Parents expecting to read something will find nothing to read.

Why it worksA boy on a beach finds an underwater camera, develops the film, and the photographs show mechanical fish and a hundred years of children each holding a photo of the child before them. The zoom sequence into that stack of photos is a genuine gasp, and it only works because there is no narrator telling you what you are looking at.

Worth knowingWordless and structurally the hardest book here - the photo-within-a-photo idea needs a five-year-old at least. Under-fours enjoy the sea creatures and miss the plot entirely.

Why it worksA dog's favourite ball is burst by another dog, and the grief is done entirely in brushstroke - Daisy drawn slack and low on an empty white page for two spreads before anything else happens. It is the only book here that gives a two-year-old a whole loss and a whole recovery without a single word to get in the way.

Worth knowingWordless, so there is nothing to read aloud. The two flat spreads after the ball bursts are meant to be sat with; hurrying past them is skipping the book.