Today’s reading is a book with no words at all. A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka tells its whole story through pictures: a little dog, her beloved red ball, a trip to the park, and a moment of loss that every child, and every grown-up, will recognize. In 2012 it won the Caldecott Medal, the American Library Association’s award for the most distinguished American picture book for children, and it was Raschka’s second Caldecott Medal, after The Hello, Goodbye Window in 2006.

The story began in Raschka’s own home. He has explained that it came from a real experience: his son Ingo had a beloved ball that was destroyed by a dog. Ingo was four at the time, and Raschka remembers how devastating it was for him. I love that a father watched his son grieve over a ball and understood that the grief was real, and then made something beautiful from it.

Watch for the colors as you read. Raschka painted Daisy and the girl with Chinese ground ink, which can look soft and sometimes brownish or bluish, and saved heavy opaque paint for the red of the ball and for Daisy’s eyes, mouth, and collar. Some teachers have noticed that the background colors shift to match Daisy’s mood.

I shaped this episode around a “Comfort” arc: the joy of loving something, the sorrow of losing it, and the kindness that helps us heal. Because the book has no words, I narrate what I see, and I hope you will pause and let your child tell the story too.

Before recording, I made my index card as a tribute to Daisy and her ball. I cut the ball from my own gelli-printed red paper, and drew Daisy in silver-gray lines, with black ears and a black patch around one blue eye. Her outline curls right across the ball, as if she will never let it go. She sits inside a red border with black dots, in my handmade red-and-black frame.

Watch the full episode, and then read it again together. Ask your child: what is Daisy feeling now?