Picturebooks in ELT

Stuck and completely over the top

2012-02-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

Front cover

Stuck by Oliver Jeffers got me gaping and giggling. It's outrageous, completely silly, but loads of fun. Great for primary kids who just love taking their imagination to the limit.

Stuck is Jeffers latest picturebook and its style is very similar to those that have gone before. He uses stick legged figures, with simple faces, often showing just dots for eyes, maybe with the addition of a line for a scowl. The character in this picturebook occasionally has a mouth, but never a nose. The illustrations are a mixture or drawing and painting, creating a very off hand, almost sketchy result. The use of Jeffer's own hand writing for the font, which even includes crossed out words, adds to the spontaneity of the visual on each spread.

The title on the front cover not only tells us the title of the picturebook, but also gives us an idea of what happens once we open the book. We don't know this until we begin, but that's one of the wonderful things about picturebooks, we can keep returning to them and making connections.

Back cover

The back cover shows a furry orange orang-utang in a rather uncomfortable position (flying? being thrown?) across the cover. I wonder why? We'll find out once we read the story. So let's open it up and look at the endpapers.

Front endpapers

In very light green, the same green we saw on the front and back covers, the end pages are covered in completely unrelated objects: whales, shoes, a bird, a cat, a tin of paint, a fireman... again we will discover what they represent when we've read the rest of the book.

Title page

The title page shows us the character we saw on the front cover, carrying his kite. Here we are at the set up of our story, a boy going out to fly his kite. On the first opening we learn that this boy is Floyd and his problem is...

... his kite is stuck in a tree. But the real trouble began when ...

Opening 2

... he threw his favourite shoe up there to knock it down. This is just the beginning of Floyd's many attempts at getting his kite down by throwing things, unexpected things. If you look at these two openings, you'll notice that the tree was first blue, now it's brown. It's as though the colours reflect Floyd's feelings. The next opening shows a different colour again:

Opening 3

You'll also notice that Jeffer's uses capital letters in the verbal text to emphasize certain words, "FAVOURITE" etc. So far we have a kite and two shoes in the tree, you can guess what he's going to do with Mitch the cat, can't you? He throws the cat into the tree to dislodge his shoes. Why, cats often get stuck in trees!

Opening 4

The next spread is a deep red in verso, lovely. Floyd is worried, what should he do, (that simple line across his eyes representing a knitted brow). He gets a ladder. We all know what he will do with that ladder, he throws it into the tree instead of climbing up it, in an attempt to knock down the cat. He flings a bucket of paint to knock down the ladder, a duck to knock down the paint, a chair to knock down the duck, a bike for the chair, then a kitchen sink and the front door (which he actually unscrews). And so it gets wilder ...

Opening 8

Next it's "The FAMILY car" and if you look carefully you can see a milkman at the front of the house, wondering where the front door is. And of course he was the next to be thrown up the tree, to knock down the car of course! Ah, and here's the orang-utang we saw on the back cover. Where did he come from? And all the other things that follow, "a small boat to knock down the orang-utang", then a "BIG BOAT"; a rhinoceros, a long distance lorry, "the HOUSE across the road", complete with the neighbour inside! How does he manage to throw them up into the tree? It doesn't seem to matter, Floyd has a kind of superhuman strength which goes so far as to fling a lighthouse and a whale.

Opening 11

Here they all are on opening 11, the tree solidly supporting the mass of objects, getting ever bigger. The verso page boldly stating that they all got stuck. The words hang above Floyd, as though he is shouting them out, exasperated. What will happen next?

Opening 12

Why a fire engine passes by of course, but they don't end up helping as we would expect, up they go "first the engine, followed by the firemen, one by one." Whatever next? With each object lodging itself in the tree Flyod worries that someone will notice it is missing, he is certain that "Firemen would definitely be noticed missing ..." and that's when he had an idea, a light blue boy against a turquoise blue background, lightbulb and all - a saw.

Opening 14

But did he saw down the tree? No! He threw the saw up at the tree of course! An down came his kite, "UNSTUCK". After all the excitement he'd forgotten all about it. Off he went and had a great afternoon.

Opening 15

In bed at night (lovely black background), he was sure he had forgotten something, and we can see the loaded tree through his bedroom window. On the very last recto we can make out all the objects in the tree against a dark blue night sky and a fireman is saying, "HANG ON A MINUTE, LADS. I've got an idea ..."

How do they get down? Well that's another story!

As is now invariably the case, there's a Youtube film advertising the book, and with Oliver Jeffers himself reading bits. He has the best Irish accent ever!

DId you pick up on the repetition? "Floyd throws the ... to knock down the ...", and a fun activity would be to get children to create trees, using watercolour and scribbles, much as Jeffers has. Don't stick to just green trees, be bold, go for blue, brown, red ... whatever. Then ask children to cut out four or five different objects from magazines or pamphlets and to retell the story using different objects. "Floyd throws the cake to knock down the ball. He throws the table to knock down the cake. He throws the BBQ to knock down the table. He throws the car to knock down the BBQ." Silly examples, but no sillier than good old Jeffers' and kids have a great time, the only rule being the objects must increase in size. These "Stuck trees" also make a fun display.

NO! The thoughtful dog

2012-02-05T15:24:00.000-08:00

I've not posted on my blog for two weeks, so a big apology to regular readers. I've just handed in my PhD thesis so it was a very busy two weeks getting everything ready, and my blog got left behind. But life is normal again and so is my blog. Hooray!

Front cover

This week's post is about a book I was sent by the publisher Child's Play and it has been sitting on my desk waiting patiently to be written about. Created by Marta Altés, NO! gives us a dog's view of life. I have four dogs of my own, so you might think I'm biased, but even if you don't like dogs, the idea that Marta Altés has taken and made into a picturebook is brilliant.

Dog owners will all have experienced chewed newspapers and slippers, dug up gardens, dirty paw prints on clean floors, disappearing food, and too much slobber. Ever wondered what the dog thinks it's doing? Marta Altés has given it a great deal of thought and dedicated the result to her dog Floc.

NO! has all those bits that make it a good picturebook. The front and back covers are one whole image, unbroken across the spine.

Back and front covers

The front cover shows the front of our protangonist, looking very pleased with himself; the back cover is the the back view of our doggy friend, and a broken vase can now be seen. We don't know it yet, but lots of information is being given us as viewers, and as ever, upon returning to this picturebook children will comment on the signifiance of these two images. You can't quite see the detailed line drawings that cover the background, they're lovely.

We open onto the end papers, literally printed on the back of the front (and back) covers. Multiple images of our dog, doing all sorts or doggy things.

Front end papers

I found myself smiling as I looked across the two pages, very doggy-like poses and positions. My own dogs do all those things, in all those ways. Title page is a goodie too.

Title page

There's our dog about to eat something quite deliciously smelly! And so our story begins...

Opening 1

This is "No". A waggy-tailed dog with a very large nose. "No" thinks he's such a good dog.

Opening 2

"... so good that my family is always calling my name!" What a cute angel-like dog. No then explains why he's such a good dog. The words tell us quite plainly of his good intentions, and the pictures show us the disasterous results. No helps his family get to places faster - I always wondered why my own dogs pulled so hard! He tastes their food, just to check it's OK ...

Opening 4

He helps his family find treasures in the garden (by digging lots of holes) and rolls in the dirtiest of dirt (and often smelliest) so that he will look his best!

Opening 6

And worse still, he warms their beds while looking his best (and you can imagine what the pictures show us!). Each and everytime, the "NO" gets longer and louder ... "NOOOOOO!"

He tidies their newspapers ...

Opening 8

... feeds himself (from the kitchen bin) and helps the family with the laundry. One of my dogs was very good at that. She chewed one of my favourite summer blouses and I still haven't forgiven her. The "no" on this spread is eight O's long!

Finally we see No's family, a spread of vignettes showing a very happy dog and two distressed children.

Opening 11

He is certain they love him "very much", but more important, he knows he loves them. There is one thing that he just doesn't get ...

Opening 13

"Why did they buy me a collar with the wrong name?" and we are shown what his real name is. There is one more spread, before the end papers.

Opening 14

He doesn't really care if his collar says Spike, he's a content little dog, knowing he's a good little dog.

It's a fun little book, and seeing the world from another's eyes is indeed a lesson, even if they are a dog's. Marta Altés has very cleverly brought pictures and words together to create this story and children are easily able to appreciate the humour the pictures bring to the words (or is it what the words bring to the pictures?). On the first sharing of the book they'll be chorusing "Noooo!" in no time (no pun intended) and will want to share their own experiences and pet dog stories. Why not encouarge them to write and illustrate some of their own pet stories and put them together in a class book.

Many thanks to Child's Play for sending me NO! by Marta Altés.

Marvin wanted more

2012-01-15T11:14:00.000-08:00

Front cover

Marvin wanted more! is Joseph Theobald's first picturebook. He's since written two more that feature Marvin. Marvin wanted more! was introduced to me by Claudia Richardson, an English Teacher in France. It's a picturebook which Claudia chose to use to focus on environmental awareness and sure enough there are a couple of activities on the net related to environmental awareness which also recommend using Marvin wanted more!.

Let's take a look at the picturebook: Marvin is introduced to us on the front cover as an excessively large sheep. That happy, blue sky above swathing green fields is continued on the back cover, and is the back ground to the blurb, which reads, "Marvin is not a happy sheep. He is smaller than the other sheep, he can't run fast, nor can he jump as high (...)" ... is this super big sheep on the front cover the hero of our story? Open up, let's find out.

End papers

The end papers are bright and colourful, a worm's eye view of fields, and in the distance a sheep, a normal sized sheep. I wonder if it's Marvin?

Title page

We see him for sure on the title page, a normal sized sheep, sniffing at a flower. There's also a nice little dedication across the page, "To my family and the river gypsies", that'll get everyone thinking!

Opening 1

Our first opening sets the scene, a field full of sheep, happily playing and munching, except for Marvin. We see his sad face before we read the confirmation that he "was feeling rather gloomy." His friend Molly is easy to find too, she's talking to him, and has a pink flower in her hair. Kinda' cute! Poor Marvin explains what's wrong, he's too small, he can't jump as high or run as fast as all the other sheep, it's terrible. "But I like you just the way you are," said Molly. Doesn't seem to make much difference, as Marvin really wants to be bigger.

Opening 2

So that night, he began... he began to eat and eat and eat. I like the salmon pink, evening sky and the long shadows. Can you see Molly snoozing with the other sheep as Marvin munches? Of course Marvin grew bigger and bigger, that much bigger he jumped so high he didn't fit on the page. He could also run faster, but that wasn't enough.

Opening 4

The bigger he got the more food he wanted. He moved from grass to hedges. Those sheep look worried don't they? Then he got so big, he started eating trees. Molly tried to stop him, but he moved onto bigger things, can you imagine?

Opening 8

"He gobbled up mountains and drank whole lakes." The sheep are terrified, running and swimming for their lives, but that didn't stop him, he wanted more. He swallowed whole countries, he was so big now, he stood knee deep in the sea and munched whole continents. That wasn't enough either ...

Opening 10

He ate the world. And that was that. There he is in opening 9, balancing on the moon, feeling quite full I should think. He's over done it a bit, and of course, once he was there, on the moon, he realised that he was all alone. "He missed the trees, and the meadow, and the other sheep, but most of all he missed Molly." That's when he began to feel sick. "BAAAAAA!"

Opening 12

Out it all came, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, The Statue of Liberty, a windmill, The Taj Mahal, a football ... all sorts, even some sheep (Marvin, how could you?). Children will love seeing all the different things he pukes up!

Opening 13

Marvin is feeling much better, though things aren't quite back to normal - the illustrations show us that things still need to be righted - and he's back with Molly and definitely feeling happier about himself! Silly Marvin!

The back endpapers are the same as the front ones, their significance greater though - they emphasise Marvin's newly found contentment with life.

It's a hilariously OTT story, and children love it, laughing out loud at the atrocities Marvin commits, but it does a nice job of showing us what envy and greed can do. It also helps children see how important it is to be us, just the way we are. So there's the moral and together with all the environmental awareness links you can include, if you want to, it's a good little book to have in any classroom library.

Thanks to Claudia for bringing it to my attention.

One smart fish

2012-01-07T15:08:00.000-08:00

Front cover

One smart fish, by Chris Wormell, won the Book Trust 2010 award for Best Picture Book for children up to 5 years old. I first heard about it through these awards, and since then it's been sitting on my shelf waiting to appear on my blog! Wormell is probably best known for his picturebook, George and the dragon, which has also been illustrated using watercolour and with the same exquisite detail. If you go to Chris Wormell's website, you will see he also uses wood block and lino printing techniques in his illustrations - a very tallented chap.

One smart fish is a book about how life evolved on earth, but shown in a fun and entertaining way. There may be readers of this blog who shake their head and say, "No way!". That's OK, selecting picturebooks is a personal thing, something we do based on our own personal beliefs, and the context in which we work. This may not be the picturebook for every ELT class, but it's certainly very suitable for many.

I'll start with the front and back covers, which satisfyingly make one whole image, that of a group of diverse, brightly coloured fish watching in amazement as a very boring medium-sized fish plays chess.

Back and front covers

You'll notice there's a sub-title, "One world changing idea!", already giving us a clue about what is to come. More clues come on the title page.

Can you see the foot prints in the sand? Once you've shared this book with a group of children you can ask them why they think the illustrator created this image for the title page. Then, there's a lovely connection between the dedication, on a sign, which appears on the title page illustration as well, but seen from behind.

Opening 1

The opening spread is beautiful, a wavy, watery under the sea scene, full of brightly coloured fish, accompanied by an undulating font, which tells us that long ago, really, really long ago, "the ocean was filled with amazing fish". We are then told a little about these fish, with fabulous illustrations supporting the descriptions. Colourful fish, "amazingly weird" fish, fat, thin, short and long. But my favourite are the next two spreads, showing big and small:

Opening 3

Notice how the sentence is left incomplete, a page turning incentive, "Some were cute, and some were ..." What do you think will come next?

Opening 4

Yikes! The different perspectives in these illustrations work brilliantly, and they are a nice contrast to the pages before and after which are crowded with fish. We have another unfinished sentence willing us to turn the page. "But the most amazing fish of all..."

Opening 5

Our hero and protagonist, a boring grey fish is the centre of attention. Look at all those brightly coloured fish, they are amazed.
Now this boring grey fish "was wonderfully smart". He could play chess, we've already seen him do this on the front cover, he could sing and dance, he drew and performed (a great illustration of this grey fish holding a fish skull in his hand in a Shakespearean pose!). But he wasn't satisfied, there was one thing he couldn't do, "he wanted to walk upon the land".

Opening 8

Opening 8 is a great spread which shows our genius with his head above the water, as his fishy companions are at the "landside for their holidays", an entertining inversion of our terrestrial reality. I love the sign warning the fish of shallow water!
Our genius fish thought and thought and finally came up with an idea. "Feet!" So obvious now, but no one had heard of such things back then. WOW! Clever fish, he put on his feet and walked out of the sea onto a vaste expanse of sand.

Opening 11

He was the first creature ever to walk on the land, and so it was boring and he was lonely. This great expanse of orange sand gives us just that impression, doesn't it? So he dived back into the water, to his waiting fishy friends.
Then true to Darwin, Chris Wormell tells us, in quite a matter of fact sort of way, that a few million years later, some other fish tried walking, but they didn't have any feet, so they slithered and crawled up the beach, and he shows us just how they do that from fish to lizard in six moves.

Opening 13

And when we turn the page, WOW ... "all this started happening", and we are shown creatures of all shapes and sizes emergeing from the fish-like animals coming out of the sea. And of course us humans are there too, near the monkeys and apes. A great spread. And all because one smart fish had an idea!

Even though this picturebook is for under 5's, in an ELT context, with lower exposure to English, it's very suitable for primary children. Some of the text is quite dense, but accessible in a sort of chatty style. Older primary children will appreciate the visual humour, they will also enjoy looking closely at the illustrations if you leave the book in the classroom library.

The blue horse

2011-12-29T09:19:00.000-08:00

Blue Horse I, 1911, Franz Marc

This is one of the many paintings by Franz Marc, a German expressionist at the beginning of the last century. He used vibrant colours to impart emotional values to his paintings: "Blue is the male principle, astringent and spiritual. Yellow is the female principle, gentle, gay and spiritual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the colour to be opposed and overcome by the other two." Eric Carle was shown the work of Franz Marc when he was a child, and his most recent picturebook, The artist who painted a blue horse was created in homage to Franz Marc and his colourful paintings.

Front cover

This is the first post on my blog which features a book by Eric Carle, I've mentioned him once or twice, but not looked at a picturebook in detail. One of the first picturebooks I used and encouraged other teachers to use was Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see? (Bill Martin Jr & Eric Carle), and many of his picturebooks are used really successfully in ELT pre-school and primary classes - my personal favourites are From head to toe, The bad tempered ladybird, Do you want to be my friend?, The mixed up chameleon, The very busy spider, Draw me a star, Today is Monday, Little cloud, Dream Snow, Mister Seahorse as well as the picturebook of all picturebooks, The very hungry caterpillar.

Back cover

The artist who painted a blue horse is created in Carle's characteristic style, collages of colourful paper against painterly backgrounds. The back cover has eight blobs of paint framing his spidery signature. The endpapers are covered in brush strokes of many colours. I'm thinking maybe he's used his waste paper, the piece that covers his work top, on which he tries his paints, overflows onto when using stencils, or splats and splashes as he creates his pieces of art.

Front endpapers

The title page contains the colourful letters from the front cover and our first opening shows us our artist...

Opening 1

"I am an artist" is like "I am a penguin" from his wonderful From head to toe - an indisputable fact - with a colourful palette at hand and a brush full of blue paint, the character could be nothing but an artist.

Our first picture is indeed a blue horse, galloping across the page, as though running home at the end of a day in the paddock.

Opening 2

And our artist continues showing us many brightly coloured animals. A red crocodile, the bubbly water covering his tail. A yellow cow, my favourite, luminous against a dark background dotted with stars.

Opening 4

Then there's a pink rabbit, a green lion, an orange elephant, a purple fox, a black polar bear, and a polka-dotted donkey. The last opening shows us the artist, standing confidently, feet apart, looking out at the reader and the words state quite clearly, "I am a good artist".

Opening 12

Some of Eric Carle's picturebooks have special messages: The mixed up chameleon shows us how important it is that we accept who we are and value differences; The very busy spider helps readers see the importance of not giving up; Mister Seahorse promotes the role of fathers in bringing up their children. The artist who painted a blue horse is no exception, it encourages children to be creative and to use their imagination, to use colours that appeal to them personally and to enjoy colour. But even more importantly it tells teachers and educators that "there isn’t any wrong colour ... and you don’t have to stay within the line. As an artist you are supposed to be free." Anything goes says Mr Carle, and an artist can be a good artist at the flick of a paintbrush.

Better than my own description of this unique picturebook is Eric Carle telling us about it in a short film you can watch on Youtube, made for Puffin Books.

There's also a nice little classroom guide, designed by the penguin group, which can be downloaded here.

Finally, listening to Eric Carle talk about picturebooks, and his life creating them, is a wonderful way to spend an hour, so if you have a hour at hand, do take a peek at the talk he gave at Harvard in April 2010, The education of a good picture writer. It is WONDERFUL and you get a real feel for the boy who made the man, who created so many beautiful books, not to mention the work he has done promoting picturebooks for children through his museum of picture book art.

A big thank you to Eric Carle for all that he has done for children through his books. But a special thank you for this last offering, one I treasure and shall use in all my pre-school classes in the hope that it encourages the children I work with to think they are "good artists" too.

Recommendation nº 7: Five Little Fiends

2011-12-18T12:59:00.000-08:00

Front cover

Five Little Fiends is a picturebook that comes recommended by Gail Ellis, who works at the British Council in Paris. It's one of my favourite picturebooks, so it's a great pleasure featuring it here on my blog. Gail mentioned this title in a talk she gave at a Picturebooks in ELT Symposium in an IATEFL Conference Brighton in April 2011, and I will be sharing some of her ideas at the end of my post.

Five Little Fiends was written and illustrated by Sarah Dyer. It was her first picturebook and she was awarded a Nestlé Book Prize for it. If you follow the links on her web site, you'll see she's created quite a few more picturebooks and there's also a good interview with Sarah on Saffron Tree.

To the book! It has a visually striking cover, five red creatures, with long claws reaching into the title. Despite their red devilishness, they look quite friendly, don't they? There are no endpapers in my paperback version, but the title page is a goodie.

Title page

The red background is quite shocking and our red fiend only stands out because he has yellowy highlights. He's hugging the world. Once you've read this picturebook you can go back to this page and talk about the significance of this little prologue-like picture with your students.

Opening 1

Opening 1 shows us a vast plain, (lovely texture there, possibly made with oil pastels), with "five lonely statues", each sitting on a plinth. The trees alongside them are dwarfed, so they must be very large.

Opening 2

On the next opening, we discover that the Fiends live inside the statues. The image on the verso there is clever, showing us a Fiend in his statue, and the writing is also inside the plinth. We also discover that these five Fiends would come out of their statues everyday and "marvel and their surroundings". In the illustrations we are shown five singular Fiends, looking out upon their surroundings, the land, the sky, the sea, the sun and the moon. The students you are sharing this book with will realise they can see the five elements upon revisiting the picturebook, so do encourage them to look and find the different bits when you read it again.

Opening 3

Oh my, what a thing to do. Each little Fiend decides to take their favourite bit. The sun, then the land (a Fiend is shown rolling it up like it's a thick piece of rope); "one took the sky" (peeling it back, as though it's wall paper).

Opening 5

Then "one took the sea, one took the moon". The illustrations show us two Fiends, one happily looking at his prize, the sea in a jug, with a lonely star fish. The other Fiend is chasing the moon with a butterfly net. The two angles, one very close up the other at a distance work really nicely on this spread.

Opening 6

Each Fiend took his prize possession back to his statue. They are shown happily encased together with their favourite thing. Again we see the outlines of the statues and the text divided up between the statue plinths. As with the surroundings, which has been separated up, the sentence is also divided up into little bits, only when seen together do the bits make sense. Those Fiends were so happy: one hugged the sun, hot and warm, another breathed in the air. Our earth-loving Fiend smelled the flowers and our sea-loving Fiend swam with his starfish, appropriately wearing a snorkel! The last Fiend, held the moon and closed his eyes in ecstasy. But we all know what happens when we remove a piece of a puzzle, nothing works quite right anymore. Of course ...

Opening 8

"... they soon realised that ... " and once again it is the illustrations that are showing us what they find out, and what is confirmed when we turn the page. For "the sun could not stay up without the sky" and without the land, "the sky was nowhere to be found", "the land started to die without water from the sea", which "could not flow without the pull of the moon" ...

Opening 11

"... and the moon could not glow without the sun." Great illustration showing the blackness of no shining moon. Nothing worked. So these clever Fiends got together and decided they would put everything back. And that's what they did.

Opening 14

And together they were able to "marvel at their surrounds" in all perfection again. If you look carefully you will see that this time they are all holding hands, reinforcing the importance of being together, thinking together about one another and the world they live in.

Fabby book or what? So simple, yet such a powerful message. One of the reviews, quoted in the back of this picturebook, comes from the Sunday Telegraph, "An unsanctimonious ecological parable about greed and sharing for three-to-five-year-olds". I'd agree whole-heartedly, but claim that we can use this with older students too, for the illustrations speak loudly and clearly, and provide excellent opportunities for discussion, which could fill a number of classes with activities about the environment and how it is interconnected.

Gail suggested that we use this picturebook, not just to promote sharing and caring but also that it be used as window into raising awareness of diversity. Her thesis is "one based on the promotion ofcommunity cohesion. This educateschildren to live with diversity and shows them how different communities can beunited by common experiences and values. It takes children from the familiar to the unfamiliar so they can seethemselves as part of a larger and diverse community" (Bland et al, 2012). She suggests that upon sharing Five Little Fiends, children could look at statues in their own school, the community within which their school is located, their own country and then other countries. In so doing moving from the known to the unknown.

An interesting and doable idea. Whatever you decide to do with it, even if you just read it, and re-read it, and let your students comment about the illustrations. It's a great little book,

Bland, J., Mourão, S., Ellis, G. Fleta, T. & Schaefer, A. (2012) Symposium on Picturebooks in ELT . In Pattison, T. (Ed.) Conference Selections Brighton 2011. Canterbury, IATEFL.

Blanket bugs come in all shapes and sizes

2011-12-09T15:57:00.000-08:00

Front cover

Bugs in a blanket is one of the many quality, Phaidon picturebooks available. Well-known for its art books, Phaidon has been working with slightly different illustrators from European markets, Beatrice Alemagna is Italian and based in France. Bugs in a blanket is the first of several Bugs books, all illustrated using real embroidery and patchwork. Quite something. You can see the stitches, make out the buttons and sequins, and you'll really get the urge to touch the pages, everything is so life-likely soft and wooly. This is one of the reasons I have chosen this picturebook, to share some very unique illustrations.

The format is landscape, with a solid hardback cover and thick pages. There are lots of pages, much more than the normal 32. I've counted 42 which is very odd, as it's not divisible by sixteen. But not to worry!

The front cover shows us a row of jolly bugs, they are standing against a background of rough linen. The back cover (which I don't have as a photo) shows us the bugs from behind. I like it when illustrators do that, front and back, it's a great visual joke. The blurb on the back reads: "It is Fat Bug's birthday, and he has invited all the bugs that live in the blanket to his party. They have never met each other before and are in for a big surprise."

Title page

The endpapers double up as the copyright and title pages. Lots of nice wooly blobs and a bug like shape for the copyright info. The title font, as on the front cover, is cut felt. As you open the picturebook, you'll discover the illustration is always on the recto, and the text is always on verso. We start with the bed, at the bottom of the garden, that's where the blanket is!

Opening 1

And that's where the bugs live! "The bugs have lived there for years and years. Each little bug, snug in his hole in the rug." But today is one little bug's birthday ...

Opening 4

He's baked a cake (blanket dust cakes!), he's decorated his hole and he's even playing music: "Everyone knows that little bugs love to dance and hop about." He hears the doorbell and runs to open the door, but what a surprise ...

Opening 6

He doesn't look happy, look at that down-turned mouth! "He thought the other little bugs would all be fat and white, just like him. What a disappointment."

Opening 7

'He looks at the little bug standing right in front of him and asks, "Why are you as skinny as a string bean?" He sounds quite cross.' Here begins an interesting visual verbal feature, where children are told what they will be seeing on the next page. Here is our skinny (well skinnier than the fat bug) bug!

Opening 8

'Little thin bug doesn't know what to say. So he looks at the bug next to him and asks, "Well, how about you? Why are you as yellow as a banana?"' And so it goes, banana Yellow Bug is offended too, and compares the next bug's eyes to an owl's eyes. He in turn is offended and asks why the Long-Legged Bug has such long legs. Long-legged bug accuses a brightly coloured bug of looking like a parrot.

Opening 11

'Little Speckled Bug is upset. He looks back at Little Fat bug and asks him, "Why are you as fat as a hippopotamus?"' We have gone full circle. '"What a silly thing to ask!" says Little Fat Bug. "I was just born like this, a little bit fat."' Well that's a sensible answer!
Each Bug then justifies their strange looks. '"I was just born a little bit skinny." says Little Thin Bug.'

Opening 14

'"I've always been yellow all over," says Little Yellow Bug.' '"I've got my Mama's eyes," says little Big-Eyed Bug' ... '"I was born brightly speckled," said Little Speckled Bug' ... Little Fat Bug realizes that no-one can help being the way they are and invites everyone in to dance and party! Clever Bug!

Opening 20

But it's the next lot of text which brings it all home ... "Because you see, in the blanket, just as in the rest of the world, we can't chose what we look like - we are all born the way we are, and we are all different." Deep and wise, especially for a Bug!

There's quite a lot of dense text on some spreads, and it's not too repetitive, so the book is not suitable for very small children in an ELT context. I'd use it in a primary classroom, no problem. There's the message that comes through fine and loud; I especially like the way the Bugs react to the insults, and the illustrations are very expressive. They will help children see how comments can hurt and offend and hopefully help them become a little more empathetic. You can support these pro-active thoughts by asking them what they think the Bugs are feeling.

There's lots there to run with if you want to:

Get children talking about the personal features they've inherited from different family members;
Match the hurtful comments with the justifications and then get children to make nice comments about each other, like:

Child 1 - "Your eyes are big and brown, they are very beautiful" "
Child 2 - "Thank you! I've got my Dad's eyes."

If you sew or knit, take some material or wool into class and make some fun Bug pictures using these different materials. Use the art work to create a host of Bugs with names and descriptions. Play match the description to the Bug.

I really like the idea of this wooly Bug world entering my classroom and helping us to think about diversity and taking care not to say hurtful things to classmates. Thanks Phaidon!

Sausages, sausages, sausages!

2011-12-04T14:16:00.000-08:00

Front cover

At the beginning of November I wrote about a book called The Cloud, which is published by Child's Play. They were really happy about my post and wrote and told me so. They were the first publishers to actually notice I was writing about their books, so I congratulated them! In return, they sent me a small selection of their latest titles, which was really nice - my first experience of getting books for free and it felt wonderful! I didn't get a buzz from all the books they sent, but I did like this one, Star Gazer's Skyscrapers and extrardinary SAUSAGES by Claudia Boldt (I'll be featuring at least one more in later posts). I like sausages and I love dogs, so that's a great help as it's a book which features a fat, sausage-loving dog and his owner! I also knew that Claudia Boldt had been nominated a Book Trust Best Illustrator of 2011, so it was good to get a look at this new talent first hand.

The front cover shows us one of the main characters, Frank, the fat, sausage-loving dog. He's got a Labrador look to him, and I instantly liked his podgyness (I have a naturally podgy black Labrador of my own, her ears woggle just like Frank's do, and she also enjoys a sausage or two!). I am already making all sorts of personal connections with this front cover, that's a good sign! If we look at the back cover, it does what I like picturebooks to do: shows one continuous illustration, and it presents the other half of this dog-owner-duo, Henrietta (her name is written in the blurb). She's swinging dangerously from something as sausages float by beneath her.

Back and front covers

This image together with the title leaves you wondering, what are we going to find inside?

Endpapers show us all that is a sausage, fresh and smoked ... alongside icereams and sundaes.

Endpapers

Curioser than ever, what is this book about?

There's a lovely "This book belongs to..."page in the forematter. Henrietta teasing Frank with a sausage. Then the title page has a little illustration of a loving dog licking his owner, a cross-eyes owner!

Title page

This illustration actually leads us into the main body of the picturebook ...

Opening 01

... for the first opening is Henrietta's reaction to an over affectioante dog, "Careful Frank! Don't knock my ice-cream!" This is when we disocver that she likes ice-cream and wants to make ice-creams when she grows up. And what about Frank?

Opening 02

A sausage dog of course! It's that image from the front cover, "I want to make sausages, eat sausages, do sausages. Sausages, sausages, sausages." And so we have our dilemma, Frank wants sausages and nothing but sausages. Henrietta continues with ideas of what she would like to do when she grows up. She wants to climb "the steepest skyscrapers, up amongst the ice-cream clouds." But Frank wants sauasges. She wants to be a lighthouse keeper ... "I could flash the light, while you guide the ships safely out to sea!"

Opening 05

Frank wants sausages... "Sau-sea-ges, splash!" Lovely sausage fish all over the place, lucky Frank! Can you see Henrietta swinging from the lighthouse in the background.

Henrietta would like to be a star gazer, on a mission to Mars.

Opening 06

This is a wonderful spread. We can see Henrietta and Frank in different poses. Flaoting together in the distance and whizzing by, Henrietta on a shooting star and Frank on Space-sa-ges! There's a constellation of stars too... the Canis Major maybe?

When Henrietta is a super dancer, so is Frank, for he dances "Sass-se-ages, siss-se-ges, sou-sa-ges, and salsa-ges." She's a queen bee and poor Frank is a worker, no sausages in this spread. Finally she decides she's going to be a mechanic, and Frank is her assistant.

Opening 09

But all he can say is "Sausages!". Henrietta has had enough. So has Frank.

Opening 10

That's a grumpy looking dog! He's right, they have nothing in common. So they sit and grump at opposites ends of the page: Henrietta slurps her icecream and Frank chomps his sausage. And that's when Henrietta has an idea. Can you guess what it is?

Opening 12

WOW! Ice-cram sausages and sausage ice-cream! Hooray! A spread full of yummy sausage ice-creams and ice-cream sausages.

Crazy story! But I really like its quirkiness, and I think children will too, (I still have to try it out in the classroom). How many of us have tiffs with our friends, when they won't do what we want to do? This little story demonstrates what great solutions we can all come to. And what fun primary children can have thinking what they'd like to be when they grow up, and why not have some wild ideas, just like Henrietta?

Thanks again to Child's Play for sending me this picturebook.

A cautionary tale ... whatever

2011-11-28T15:28:00.000-08:00

But

Front cover

A colleague told me about Whatever by William Bee, and when it arrived, sometime over the summer holidays, I immediately took to its clever simplicity. I laughed outloud on the first read, then returned slowly to take in the different parts and look carefully at the illustrations.

Anyone remember those silly tales about boys who ran away from their nurses, and were eaten by lions or girls who told lies and were burned to death? 19th century children's literature at its best and probably the most well known collection, Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc, is still available in ever more modern editions. Whatever has that cautionary tale feel to it, and a lovely retro look too.

Our protangonist stands, arms outstretched, on the front cover. He's dressed like a miniature business man, and you can just imagine the kind of child he is ... prim and proper and ever so annoying.

Back and front covers

If you open out the book, you'll find the back cover is the mirror image of the front. Witty! Endpapers are nice and decorative too.

Front endpapers

I'm wondering whether Willaim Bee has been influenced by 1950's wall paper designs for this pattern? The title page is plain and simple: contains the title, the author/illustrator's and the publisher's names. But the facing copyright page is neat.

One bare tree - all its leaves are lined up on the endpapers - and can you see the way some letters have been enlarged in bold? (If you click on the image you can see better) What do they say? "Whatever", yeah, who gives a damn about the copyright blurb?

This picturebook uses lots of white space. It contributes to pacing the narrative, makes us pause and look as the information is given to us in bits as we turn the pages.

Opening 1

First we are shown Billy (diminutive of William, by the way), hands down now, the half smile stuck on his face, looking bored. Then we meet Billy's Dad.

Opening 2

He's a bigger version of Billy, the only difference being his hat, his larger feet and his bushier eyebrows ... oh and his exuberance. It's oozing off this page already.

And so we begin. Our problem is that Billy is difficult to please. Dad is exuberantly waving puppets, while discarded soldiers are left behind and Billy looks away uninterested.

Opening 3

Show Billy something very tall ...

Opening 4

"And he'll say 'whatever'". (Love the way the book has to be turned to portrait for the giraffe).

Opening 5

Notice as you turn the pages how Billy's face shows all sorts of expressions: surprise, disgust, disinterest, annoyance - all with those simple dots for eyes, angled lines for eyebrows and a little red mouth that moves mostly downwards.

And so we continue showing Billy "something very small" (pretty butterflies); the world's curliest trumpet (and it really is curly!); the world's bounciest castle, and he always says "Whatever".

Opening 9

Take him on the world's steamiest train (there's even a fish leaping around!), or "fly him to outer space" ... what does he say? "Whatever". And so what happens when Dad tries to scare him with the world's hungriest tiger? Why, Billy says "Whatever" of course!

Opening 10

Isn't he a handsome tiger? And a hungry one too ...

Opening 11

Oops! All but Billy's shoe is swallowed. Lots of lovely white as the tiger plods off.

Opening 13

Can you see the tiger's bulging tummy? And Billy decides it's time to say something ..."Dad! I'm still in here you know". Guess who's leading the tiger away from the story, and what do you think he says when he hears Billy? I'll leave you to guess!

Reviews describe this as being a picturebook for all ages. Absolutely right. It could be used in primary, where everyone will quickly call out "Whatever!", or with teens, where they will mutter "Whatever" under their breath! Get them to say "Whatever" in a dozen different ways, using Billy's facial expressions as clues to his mood. With these students, you might also want to show them some of the original cautionary tales for fun. And with adults in a teacher training context use this picturebook for them to see how cleverly words and pictures can be used to create irony and humour suitable for a wide range of ages.

And if you really want to ensure there's a bit of formal language work, why not have some fun with superlatives, they're even highlighted in the verbal text - what more could we ask?

But most of all, it's a great little picturebook. Great for just reading and sharing and laughing together over.

I was prompted to feature it on my blog when I saw it had recently been published in Portuguese by one of my favourite Portuguese publishers, Planeta Tangerina. Well done them for bringing it into Portugal. Well done me for featuring it on my blog!

Every one has bad days

2011-11-19T09:46:00.000-08:00

Front cover

Bad Day, written by Jeni Couzyn and illustrated by Paul Demeyer, was a picturebook I read to my son when he was small. It's a title I've often returned to and enjoyed. I like Couzyn's rhythmic verbal text and Demeyer's illustrations bring the picturebook together beautifully. It's now out of print but still available second hand on amazon.

It follows on nicely from The Cloud, which I featured at the beginning of the month, and also depicts a child who's not happy, cross and angry with his family, and who decides to "Go away".

The title page has a small picture of a yellow canary, and in many of the following illustrations the canary can be seen fluttery around in the illustrations.

Opening 1

The picturebook opens on a single recto page, facing the copyright and dedication pages. Nice little dedication up at the top!

All the illustrations are shown in a frame, this is supposed to make us feel detached, as though we are watching the events from afar. Each page, or occasionally a double spread, has a short sentence accompanied by a framed illustration. The verbal text really is rhythmic and lovely to read and children pick it up very quickly. The illustrations skillfully expand upon what the words are hinting at. Here, on opening 1, we see a happy little family, all getting on with life, smiling, except for our protangonist - he's easy to spot with a face like thunder!

Opening 2

And so it continues, the family gets on with life, mum and dad, big brother and little brother, the little yellow bird and their energetic dog, and in each illustration we see the thunder faced child get crosser and crosser with the world. The words continue quite matter of factly, and we gradually see the family notice that he's not having a good day - big brother does seem oblivious though! It continues ... "Hate my big brother. Hate my little brother." The angry child covets his older brother's freedom, fiddling with his toy motorbike as the brother zooms off on his real one. Then he gets cross when his little brother takes the toy motorbike. Then everything comes to a head, as it does on all bad days ...

Opening 4

Baby brother cries and dad gets cross. If you click on the image above, you'll be bale to see the headlines in dad's newspaper, "Bad news", "Pretty bad news", "Worse news", More bad news"! Then poor mum has just had enough! Her two sons are crying, the dog is howling and dad has given up. "Go away", she cries! Children and teachers will empathise with this illustration, we've all experienced a day just like this!

Our cross little boy goes up stairs, packs his favourite toys and runs out, escorted by the family dog and his pet canary.

Opening 6

Then out in the street, he checks his wings, which we may have noticed sticking out of his case on opening 5, (and most likely children will notice them upon re-readings). The canary has gone, but the dog is around. The wings are yellow like the canary and we wonder if they've been fashioned to imitate the small family pet. And he's off, up into the sky and over the cars. The family dog has his case, maybe it's a regular thing this flying away business?

Hate is still a BIG feeling though...

Opening 7

"Hate these aeroplanes." Possibly justified - that's a lot of planes!

He flies over the Atlantic and asks, "Is this away?". He asks a bird, who happens to be on the Statue of Liberty, "Is this away?" and of course the reply is, "No, this is New York." Finally he pauses on a branch. And the rhythm slows, the colours are deep bluey greens and we are gradually calming down. "Is this away?", Owl replies, "No."...

Opening 11

Here we see owl, comforting the little boy, who's not angry any more. So what is "Away"?

Opening 12

"Away is a feeling." Suddenly, like one of those Hollywood movies we see a dozen little faces and heads pop up, are they about to break into song? And Owl asks, "Love anyone?" Oh my goodness, the million dollar question.

Opening 14

Why, "Yes!", our once-upon-a-time-angry little boy realises and off he flies. And look at all those animals, suddenly they are in little family groups, and they are waving off our protangonist.

Opening 15

The focus on hate in the beginning is replaced with love ...

"Love my Mum, love my Dad,

love my monkey, love my dog,

love my bird, love my big brother,

love my little brother,"

And the family is all happy, our little boy is being pampered by mum. Everyone is ready for bed, the boy's case, wings and toys are scattered on the floor. Everything is normal again.

Opening 16

And the final illustration shows our little boy, snuggled in bed, asleep, his wings, the dog and canary nearby and we read the words, "Love owl" ... and he's there in a framed picture above the bed. Wise old owl, he knows.

As we've shared this picturebook, we've felt the words through the way we say them and the images that have accompanied them. Once again, it's an excellent support for developing emotional intelligence. Children will empathise with the little boy and be carried with him on his emotional roller coaster. Did he really fly away? Was it all a dream? How do we deal with our bad days? Lots of possibilities for discussion, in particular with primary children.

Jeni Couzyn is a poet and the verbal text is a poem. I've copied it below so you can read it in its entirety. Feel the emotion as it peeks then slowly dissipates, to be replaced with calm and comfort.

Hate this day.
Hate these toys. Hate this food.

Hate my big brother. Hate my little brother.

Hate my dad. "Go away."

Going away. Got my suitcase.

Got my wings. Work OK.

Hate these aeroplanes.

Is this away?

No, this is the Atlantic.

Is this away?

No, this is New York.

Is this away?

No.

Away isn't a place. Away is a feeling.

Love anyone?

Yes.

Love my Mum, love my Dad,

love my monkey, love my dog,

love my bird, love my big brother,

love my little brother,

love owl.

The cloud - a book that shows emotions

2011-11-06T07:33:00.000-08:00

Front cover

I saw The Cloud by Hanna Cumming in a catalogue by The Story Bag for workshops that brought together art and literature. I ordered it to satisfy my curiosity, it was the only picturebook on the list which I didn't know.

Child's Play the publisher's give a short description of The Cloud on their web site "Everyone has bad days, and children are no exception. When a black cloud descends on a little girl at school, support from a classmate with a great deal of imagination helps to brighten up everyone’s lives. The atmospheric illustrations really tell the story in this delightful picture book from a new author/illustrator."

It is the atmospheric illustrations that I am going to focus on in my blog post.

What mood or emotion do you associate grey with? Most of us will go for sad, negative, angry, upset. Grey is a depressing colour and suitably so it is the background of the front and back covers for The Cloud. The top part of the child's face we just see under the foreboding scribbled cloud, confirms the negative, sad feeling the background grey gives us. Those touches of colour coming in from the edges look hopeful though, I wonder why they are there?

Endpapers

I find the endpapers quite shocking in their bright red, with the coloured crayons dispersed among the black squiggles. I'm not sure why Cumming chose red, maybe because the main character has a red t-shirt? Why do you think she chose red? What do your children think?

Title page

Though this page appears grey in my photo, it isn't! It's actually white, with just the oval under the title in grey! All those arty materials look fun. Upon rereading this picturebook children will identify with these images and understand that it was through drawing, colouring and painting with a friend that our character was helped.

Opening 1

Opening 1 shows us the art class. We are told it's fun, and despite the grey looking classroom (it's raining outside as well!) it does look like everyone is enjoying themselves... "Well, almost everyone." There's our character in her red t-shirt, with scowling eyes, arms crossed and tightly closed mouth. "There was one girl, who sat by herself and drew nothing."

Opening 3

The illustration on the verso page is the one we saw on the front cover. Look at those kids chatting and having fun in the recto, but no one talks to the girl with the cloud over her head. I'm not surprised are you? She looks very grumpy. But one little girl in the class is keen to make friends, so off she goes ...

Opening 5

There's a lovely sequence in verso, showing the little girl being engulfed in black cloud ... having a chat didn't seem to work. I wonder what the reply was? It is a particularly useful activity to ask the children in your class what they think - a way for them to have a go at reading feelings and emotions and sharing these personal readings.

Opening 7

But this little blond-haired girl was not put off, she looked at her crayons and thought maybe there was a way. It didn't go too well to begin with, but she kept on trying, kept on drawing and finally ...

Opening 8

Our girl with a cloud over her head was smiling, only a tiny smile, but it's a smile. Cloud is a bit smaller too! And look out the classroom window ... it's almost stopped raining ... and the classroom wall is not quite so grey either - everything looks brighter.

But it doesn't stop there, the children in the classroom liked the idea of creating pictures together, so they all had a go ...

Opening 9

And here they are! Can you see the blond-haired girl who didn't give up? And how much smaller that black cloud is! What fun they are all having, and how much brighter that classroom is now! Look back at opening 1, just to remind yourselves. They end up doing a huge class drawing, which really does look fun, but best of all ...

Opening 11

"... the cloud was gone. Well sort of!" And our classroom window is there again, and even if we can still see a tiny cloud in the sky the sun is shining, shining so brightly that the classroom is all yellow and warm. It matches the big smile across the girl's face.

There's a small circular illustration before the back endpapers, showing a happily integrated child playing hopscotch with kids in her class.

Opening 12

There's a solitary figure by the gate, I wonder if the children will invite her to join their game?

The Cloud is a very simple, clear story. It's about accepting and not giving up on people, and the illustrations help readers see and feel emotion clearly too. This little book is excellent for actively working with emotional intelligence, but as mediators we need to give our children pointers, ask them to look and think: what colours are the pages and what do these colours make us feel? What are the characters feeling, how do they know this? Can we imitate their postures and facial expressions, what do they feel like? Encourage children to empathise with the dark haired girl whose cloud eventually disappears, what could she be so upset about? By identifying emotions in others and seeing how problems can be resolved, young children can learn strategies of their own, both when they have problems, or to help others overcome their own.

Who was Goldilocks?

2011-10-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

Front cover

Goldilocks and the three bears is a well known children's story in English speaking countries and when I first began using it in Portugal in the early 90's very few Portuguese pre-school educators knew it, it's more well known now I think. It's a story we use in ELT for numbers and family (mummy, daddy and baby); every thing comes in threes (three bears, three bowls, three chairs, three beds) , and there are some nice adjectives (hot and cold, hard and soft and just right!). We assume , if we think about it at all, that Goldilocks is a spoilt little brat, going where she has not been invited, doing what she's not meant to do and generally well deserving of the fright she gets when the bears find her in their bedroom. Anthony Browne, takes us on quite a different visual journey in his picturebook Me and You. In an interview about his picturebook, he says:

"I always thought that Goldilocks got a rough deal in the original and I'm trying to redress the balance. How do we know that she was a greedy, selfish little girl? Perhaps there was a reason for her to enter the bears' house? I'm trying to tell the story from two different points of view: the baby bear's story shown in warm, reassuring coloured pencils, and Goldilock's harsher existence painted like a graphic novel, in sepia tones." The result is a perfect picturebook, to be contemplated from front to back cover, with nothing missed out.

Back and front covers

The front and back covers of the hard back edition are one whole image, a grassy area in front of a long row of terraced houses. The bear family are presented on the cover, looking out as us, as though we are taking a photo of them all, a happy little family. In the background, by chance we've also photographed a solitary figure, walking head down, hands in pockets.

Front endpapers

The endpapers are plain with no illustrations, however the baby blue and orange are prominent in the two narratives we find in the picturebook. The blue belongs to the bear and his family and the orange to the sepia illustrations of the little girl.

Title page

The title page contains two illustrations which are copies from later in the book. They are fittingly inside frames, two very different characters in different worlds, and placed under the three title words, "Me and You", for the story that follows is told in the voice of the little boy bear. The two illustrations are different in both tone and style, the bear is drawn with coloured crayon, the bright colours contrast the duller, darker sepia tones of the watercolour illustration of the little girl, who has a tiny piece of auburn hair sticking out from under her hood, (it almost connects her to the bear). The title uses different fonts which emphasise the difference between the two characters as well. The dedication on the facing page reads, "For all the underdogs".

Opening 1

The little boy bear introduces us to his house, a warm yellow home, number 3 (of course!) in a spot of bright green, in the background the rest of the city appears to be big and industrial-like, (but those chimneys and towers could also be tall tree trunks). There's a menacing looking wolf-like dog entering the illustration, but everything else looks serene and peaceful. The three bears are each seen from separate windows, in different parts of the house and a solitary red ball bounces alone in the garden outside.

Opening 2

The book continues in double page format, verso in sepia showing us the little girl's story and recto in bright, picturebook-like colours showing and telling us the little boy bear's story. The little girl's world is daddy-less, it's cold and drab, they live in a small house in the city, and when we see mummy pause in front of the butcher there is confirmation that there may not be much money to spare either. Now the recto, and if you look carefully at the pencil crayon illustrations, you will see everything is outlined in the orangey brown of the bears, uniting the images within their world. Daddy is tall and wide, behind a more fragile mummy and their cute little son, they ooze affluence - I love mummy bear's skinny ankles, all rich mother's have skinny ankles!

Opening 3

As little boy bear tells us his story, the story we know so well about porridge that's too hot to eat, the little girl's story visually unfolds - a story we don't know at all, about a little girl who sees a balloon, tries to catch it and gets lost. We see her face properly for the first time and she is frightened.

Opening 4

The bears walk in their very posh neighbourhood - three together, yet very seperate, little boy bear describing the events. "Daddy talked about his work and Mummy talked about her work. I just messed about." (Look carefully at the background trees, notice anything odd?) We see the little girl walking, getting more and more lost and suddenly coming upon the bears' lovely yellow house in the middle of the greyness she has been runing from. It is glowing, enticing her with its warmth and she pushes the front door open. As she moves around the table trying the porridge, the bears walk back home. As she tries the three chairs (and breaks the little one), they walk through their open front door, mummy and daddy accusing each other of leaving it open. As the little girl walks up the stairs, we see the three bears begin the someone's-been-eating-my-porridge-routine. She tries the beds as the bears find the three chairs...'"We'd better take a look upstairs", whispered Daddy. "After you, Mummy." '

Opening 9

The little girl is asleep, comfy in little boy bear's bed, her auburn hair flowing as though it's part of the wood grain in the headboard. The bears are quietly climbing the stairs, '"Do be careful dear," said Daddy.'

Opening 10

And there they are! We see the same scene from both perspectives. The little girl in her sepia watercolour illustration is suddenly confronted by three scarey bears. Browne has skillfully painted their fur to make them look prickly and mean, the background is dark, a darkness which seems to radiate from the bears. We are feeling so sorry for the little girl whose red hair is reflected in the bears' eyes. We see her terror in the little boy bear's version, as he continues with his well known monolgue ... "Someone's in my bed,"I said, "and they're STILL THERE." Even the bears carved into the head board are surprised.

Opening 11

The little girl flees. As the little boy bear describes her actions, we see her leave the bedroom, go down the stairs, out through the front door and into the street. As she runs into the rain we can just make out the bear family peering through their windows at her, the little boy bear upstairs, the adults downstairs. The graphic novel frames take the girl back into the grey city, past railings, walls topped with barbed wire and others covered in graffiti. We see this as well as glance across at the little boy bear. In his colorful picture he is deadpan looking through his window. At first we are uncertain if he is in or out, the reflection of a wooded landscape looks like it is behind him... the forest that belongs to the original story maybe? "I wonder what happened to her?" he says to himself.
The ending is a hopeful one, I say this as Anthony Browne has described it so himself. And of course it is, the illustrations in the final spread are full of hope, at least the final frames are ...

Opening 12

Janet Evans interviewed Anthony Browne in her latest collection of chapters Talking beyond the page and he explained how the story wasn't originally in its present form. He had thought of telling two stories, first the bear's then the girl's, but it was the editor who suggested telling two stories simultaneously, in parallel, with a hopeful ending. It works wonderfully and we all sigh a deep sigh as we see the girl reunited with her mum. Do we think about the bear again? A lonely little chap, in his pretty house with a lovely garden.

Anthony Browne is a genius - this picturebook is challenging on many levels. It needs to be read and re-read, and the children/teens/young adults you are showing this picturebook to, need to be encouarged to talk through what they see and think about as they piece the puzzles together. When Browne was the UK Children's Laureate (2009 - 2011) he said the following: " ... Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book." Me and You does just that and can be used with children and teenagers as a spring board for discussion.

If you go to the CKG website here, you can download some excellent visual literacy activity sheets for a number of picturebooks, including Me and You.

The true story by A. Wolf

2011-10-23T13:50:00.000-07:00

Front cover

"You may think you know the story of The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf - but only one person knows the real story. And that person is A. Wolf. His tale starts with a birthday cake for his dear old granny, a bad head cold and a bad reputation. The rest (as they say) is history."

This is the blurb on the inside of the front cover of The true story of the 3 little pigs! It's all about perspective really. This picturebook shows us the story we know and love from Wolf's perspective, and he's certain he was framed!

I've already featured a picturebook that takes this traditional story and gives it a twist, The three little wolves and the big bad pig, making it very appropriate for older learners. This too is a great title for the teenage ELT classroom.

The true story of the 3 little pigs was written by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith, who together, with Molly Leach as designer, create incredible picturebooks.

As with all these adaptations of traditional stories, the humour comes from the reader's previous knowledge and understanding of the original story. This picturebook is particularly special and has been written about quite extensively by academics. It's considered an example of a postmodern picturebook due to the way the illustrations subvert the words. Probably one of the reasons it's not used much in ELT. I hope that by talking about it here, someone will have a go and do great things!

So let's take a look at this example of a postmodern picturebook!

The font cover is the front page of the Daily Wolf - naturally the perfect tabloid to cover this kind of story: headline is the title of our story and the journalist is A. Wolf (though we are also told that there is a real author "As told by Jon Scieszka") The wolf in the photo is depicted as a well dressed gentleman with a polka dot bow tie and wearing studious glasses. The pigs he is supposedly blowing (huffing?) are pink and shiny. Our reader is also pig, can you see his trotter holding the bottom right corner of the newspaper?

Back cover

The back cover is a collage illustration of a page of a newspaper - strips of columns of text, interrupted by a miniature illustration in the centre, showing the scenes of the crimes. So not only does the newspaper represent sensationalism, but there's a hint of the courtroom here, of judgement day.

Title page

As usual I have the paperback edition of this picturebook. So it opens immediately onto the title page. A sepia tone to the title page illustration gives an air of time past. There are four objects placed together in the centre of the aged background, some tufts of straw and a twig set in a measuring jug, all placed on a brick. Could these be pieces of evidence?
And so the Wolf's side of the story begins ... He introduces himself.

Opening 2

The words are matter of fact, in the first person (for it is the Wolf who is telling the story). He asks us to call him Al, "I don't know how this whole Big Bad Wold thing got started ...". The illustration is dark, but you can just make out the prison stripes in the Wolf's sleeves. He's looking out at the reader quite innocently, and adjusting his glasses. "Maybe it's because of our diet.", he says. The Wolf is peering up from behind the table top, "Hey, it's not my fault wolves eat cute little animals like bunnies and sheep and pigs. That's just the way we are. If cheeseburgers were cute, folks would probably think you were Big and Bad, too." An enormous hamburger shines out at us from the illustration, Lane Smith has used a photo of a real bun, and filled it with all sorts of delicacies. Can you see the different animals sticking out of the filling?

Before I go on, just a note about the illustrations: on most openings they are shown in frames. There's a photograph like feel to them, as though they have been kept in an album, those wiggly edges remind me of the photos my Mum has of her family in the 50's. Frames around illustrations are supposed to make us feel detached - we look at these illustrations with very little sympathy.

Opening 3

Even the illustration of long-ago-school-day slate, here in opening 3, is a framed image. "The real story is about a sneeze and a cup of sugar." But the introduction has been made, and we are now ready to hear the real story, Wolf's story. The verso in this opening is a wonderful collection of letters, representing elements from within the story we know so well. There are references to the three houses made of brick, sticks and straw. We can see a piggy tail and a snout. A big mouth with a sticky out tongue (E) and the wolf's bushy tail. And the pair of ears at the bottom of the page, encourage the story along ... go on then, I'm all ears!

Opening 4

"Way back in Once upon a time ..." A mixture of real and fantasy in one breath! Here is Wolf making a cake for his "dear old granny" - her picture is on the wall, and if you look closely you will see two rabbit ears sticking out of the mixture. What a mixture it is too! Whole eggs, shells and all. Lane Smith has used collage quite minimally here, the eggs, the butter in the bottom right corner and the picture frame. Wolf tells us he ran out of sugar for the cake, so he went next door to borrow some.

Opening 5

The next door we are shown is miles away! And as we all suspect it's a house of straw, which the Wolf is most derogatory about, "... who in his right mind would build a house of straw?" Upon knocking on the door, it fell in and that's when his nose started itching! He huffed and he snuffed...

Opening 7

And we all know what happened next!

Opening 8

The words continue to describe the incident in a dead pan sort of tone... "And you know what? The whole darn straw house fell down. ..." The illustrations in verso look like the aftermath of a huge explosion, and the dead little piggy's bottom is visible in the middle of the straw strewn ground. Wolf looks visibly perplexed in the verso "... such a shame to leave a perfectly good ham dinner lying there in the straw. So I ate it up."
This happens once again with the pig who lived in the stick house, the Wolf's nose tickles, he huffed and he snuffed, and the little pig ended up dead and ... "Think of it as a second helping", said Wolf! There's a small vignette, showing us a fat Wolf, holding his stomach!
At the brick house the Wolf is very upset: not only did the pig tell him to go away, a pig who looks big and mean through the small window in the illustration, but he also yelled, "And your old granny can sit on a pin!" The straw that broke the camel's back ... the Wolf admitted to going nuts.
That's when the cops arrived, to find Wolf "huffing and puffing and making a real scene." Funnily enough they were all pink pigs!
And "The rest they say is history."

Opening 14

The newspaper in this illustration harks back to the front cover, only this time, it's The Daily Pig, and the headlines read "BIG BAD WOLF!", "Wolf: I'll huff and I'll puff ..., "A.T. Wolf big and bad", Red Riding Hood settles dispute out of court", "Canis Lupus - seen as menace". The hand holding the paper looks like it could belong to Wolf this time.
The final page shows us Wolf as he is today, the after-the-story-Wolf, the one who's been framed! He looks feeble alongside the mean looking pig in prison uniform!

Opening 15

It's a brilliant picturebook, using words and pictures to create an entertaining, clever version of the well-known story. And of course it makes you wonder about all the other underdogs in traditional stories. What about the wicked step-mother? The two ugly sisters? The giant at the top of the bean stalk? Maybe they were all framed? Great extension activities for students to write alternative narratives based on the underdog.

As usual there are a number of Youtube films but I like this one in particular, the narrator's voice is so matter of fact and jolly, it's great!

And there are some interesting resource pages on the net if that's what you like: Scholastic resources; LitGuides and other stuff.

More and more I just love the sharing of a good picturebook, and this one is sooo good. Giggling and laughing together in class, sharing the visual verbal jokes - there's nothing more motivating for a language learner.

Snow White in New York

2011-10-09T08:10:00.000-07:00

Front cover

Snow White is a European fairy tale. The version we are all familiar with is probably that of the Grimm Brothers and or the Disney one of 1937. Whichever, Snow White is well-known to most children. The story of a motherless child, whose father remarries. The step-mother is jealous of Snow White's beauty and tries to do away with her. She is abandoned somewhere far away, where she happens upon seven kind men, who look after her, until eventually she is poisoned by the step mother and dies. But all ends well when a handsome prince discovers her coffin, and the bit of poisoned apple stuck in her throat is dislodged and she awakes. In the Disney version, they fall in love and live happily ever after! But the Brothers Grimm have the step mother go to the wedding and be forced to dance herself to death in a pair of iron shoes!

Snow White in New York is vibrantly illustrated version of the Snow White story, set in New York in the Jazzy, Art Deco of the 1920's. It was first published in 1986 and won The Kate Greenaway Medal. The illustrations are spectacular and evoke the era brilliantly.

Back and front covers

The front and back covers are one continuous illustration. Those parallel streets we associate with New York, are at the centre of each cover, with huge buildings looming on either side. The abstract colourful shapes represent all the different signs and lights and they blink at us as we study the illustration. That has to be Snow White walking towards us, the sun rising behind her.

Title page

The title page comes next in my paperback edition. The sun is still rising, it's radiating rays in pink and yellow stretch out behind the New York buildings.

Upon turning the page we arrive at a wordless spread - well not quite, the verso contains the copyright information, but the recto shows us a large building, quite definitely a rich person's home, with a chauffeur waiting outside in a very smart car. I wonder who lives there?

Opening 1

"Once upon a time there was a poor little rich girl called Snow White ... " so that's who lives there, Snow White. But poor thing, this is her step-mother, wicked right from the first opening, her pointy red nails and her slit, green eyes looking out at the reader. The father has no idea of her wickedness, and is shown looking straight ahead. Snow White is standing in the street, tiny and pink in the back ground. The signs stand boldly behind her pointing towards the happy married couple.

Snow White's step mother was the "classiest dame in town", but unknown to everyone she was also the "Queen of the Underworld", and she just loved to see herself in the "New York Mirror", the best tabloid in town! It was in the paper that she read about her step-daughter.

Opening 3

"Snow White the belle of New York City" ... The two women appear as equals in the illustration and again Fiona French has used symmetrical motifs, showing each woman flanked by men in hats and suits. Snow White is curvy and pink, yellow arches cris-cross behind her. She is smiling, her golden curls are soft and luminous. She is the archetypical of goodness. The men around her are young and handsome too. The step-mother is in red and black, she is scowling, her eyes are looking straight out at the reader, challenging us to stop her wickedness! The men around her are old, their noses hooked, their mouths down-turned. We see the good and the bad.

And we all know what happens don't we? In this version, Snow White is taken "down town".

Opening 4

Can you see her? Down town is dark, in contrast to the rest of the city, filled with sparkling lights. I really like this illustration. The contrasting architecture, the reflections in the water, and Snow White being left by the step-mother's body guard.

Snow White is lost and alone, and she wonders the streets of down town New York, until she hears some music coming from an open door.

Opening 5

Will our students recognise the kind of music she hears? I suppose it depends, but it's a great double spread, with Snow White peeking in at the doorway, and the red sun rising again in the early morning. Seven jazz players, and of course they let her stay, as long as she works.

Opening 6

"'What can I do?' she asked. 'Can you sing?' said one of them." And the illustration answers the question. Can she sing! WOW! The change from black silhouettes to reddy-yellow ones is superb. Snow White is in the limelight, her white skin, and solid red dress, with just one or two red tassels, surrounded by the seven jazz players, cris-crossed in yellow and orange, you can almost hear the music as Snow White sings for them. And just as luck would have it a handsome newspaper reporter was in the audience and he writes about this brand new star. The step-mother reads about Snow White's debut and is "mad with rage". And so she decides to do the wicked deed herself, and plans a party in honour of Snow White's success.

Opening 9

"Secretly she dropped a poisoned cherry in a cocktail and handed it to Snow White with a smile." Snow White is surrounded by people who think she is wonderful, but the words direct us to the step-mother mixing a cocktail, the bottle of poison on the plant stand nearby.

Opening 10

A wordless spread, the happy party represented in the background, the cocktail about to change hands.

We don't get shown the dying scene, instead we are taken to the New York streets in the rain. Newspapers tell us what happened, as they have done through out this story. They are full of the news of her death and crowds of people stand in the non-stop rain as her coffin is driven through the streets.

Opening 12

But of course we know what happens, as the seven jazz players carry her coffin up the church steps, one of them stumbles and ... "Snow White opened her eyes." The poisoned cherry, stuck in her throat was dislodged and she looked into the eyes of the handsome reporter. They fell in love, had a big wedding and lived happily ever after!

Opening 14

The illustrations also show us what happened to the step-mother!

Similar to the picturebook, The three little wolves and the big bad pig, this kind of adaptation can be used with older students as the first step towards making their own versions of well-known and traditional stories. But, what I like about this particular title are the visual representations of good and bad, happy and sad, safe and dangerous, Fiona French uses colour and shape brilliantly. In addition, the technique of filling spaces with lines of colour reminds me of the impressionist paintings of Seurat , who used dots instead of lines, but the idea is the same. Finally using a picturebook like this when students are learning about the period of Art Deco in history can help them make connections and possibly follow up with some research into architecture, art, clothes, music, cars etc of the time.

The house that crack built

2011-10-01T08:58:00.000-07:00

Front cover

Not long ago a friend and colleague asked me if I knew this picturebook, The house that crack built by Clark Taylor and Jan Dicks. I didn't, was intrigued and ordered it.

My recent focus on traditional songs and rhymes is an excellent background for this particular title, which takes the familiar children's nursery rhyme, This is the house that Jack built and turns it into a thought provoking picturebook about the drug trade and cocaine addition. What's so clever about taking such a topic and creating a picturebook is the wider audience it reaches. Children in primary can understand the simple text and look at and question the illustrations. Older students, teens and young adults, can use both the words and illustrations as a spring board for deeper, more thought provoking discussion. It's cumulative rhyme has a hip-hop beat to it, which again makes it very suitable for teens. The house that crack built was published nearly twenty years ago with the intention of helping children understand how to make the right choice about drugs. The proceeds of sales go towards drug education, prevention and rehabilitation programs that specifically help children.

La Rêve . Picasso 1932

Let's take a look at the illustrations. The front cover depicts the street where it all happens. The two more realistic figures reappear in the picturebook on the title page and on the afterword page. They aren't actually characters from the visual narrative, but possibly represent the children this picturebook is written to help. Children with nothing to do, children whose parents aren't around much, shoeless children in an urban setting. The pale figures in the wall mural, separated by the symbolic crack, hang as though in mid-air, their skin pale and sickly, their faces stylistically reminiscent of cubism. There's a well-known portrait by Picasso called Le Rêve (The dream), shown here on the right, where we can see some similarities to the way the faces have been painted by the illustrator. The dislocated head position is seen again in some of the later illustrations, representative of being high. In the foreground, the gutter is full of cigarette ends or stubs from left over joints.
The endpapers are scattered with coca leaves.

Endpapers

As we begin the rhythmic cumulative verbal text, the story reveals itself line by line on the verso, with the illustrations facing, on the recto: square illustrations with a white boarder, or frame, around them.

Opening 1: "This is the House that crack built"

A framed illustration is supposed to have a psychological affect on the viewer, we look at it detached and unemotionally. Do these framed illustrations make us feel detached? This particular illustration could be any beautiful mansion in a hot country, but the words make us rethink and its affluence takes on a different meaning.

Opening 2: "This is the Man, who lives in the House that crack built"

We are shown the man who lives in the house: a sleek, clean cut individual, with an original Matisse, La Nu Rose (1935), hanging on his wall. The causal sequence continues, introducing us to the soldiers who guard the man, dark eyed men with rifles over their shoulders. Then the farmers who collect the coca leaves ...

Opening 4: "These are the Farmers who work in the heat and fear the Soldiers, who guard the Man, who lives in the House that crack built"

Many of the illustrations in this little picturebook contain unusual perspectives: in opening 4 we have a close-up of the Farmer, but we can't see his eyes. The poor woman with no shoes is only shown from the legs down: faceless in the sequence of events.
In the next illustration we are shown the coca plant against a sunny blue sky, a pretty plant ...

Opening 5: "These are the Plants that people can't eat, raised by the Farmers who work in the heat and fear the Soldiers who guard the Man who lives in the House that crack built."

... but as the verbal text emphasises the people can't eat it, it feeds no-one, instead it's made into cocaine and exchanged for large sums of money in the the streets of the civilised world.

Opening 7: "This is the Street of a town in pain that cries for the Drug known as cocaine, made from the Plants that people can't eat, raised by the Farmers that work in the heat and fear the Soldiers that guard the Man who lives in the House that crack built."

This illustration shows us what it's like in the street. Seen through a window, a faceless woman holding a baby. Outside, an anguished woman is banging her head on the wall, a man with an upside-down head, high - the cigarette or joint ends separating the foreground figure form those in the background.
We next meet "the Gang, fleet and elite" then the "Cop working his beat".

Opening 9: "This is the Cop working his beat, who battles the Gang, fleet and elite, that rules the Street of a Town in pain ..."

We encounter a "Boy feeling the heat" who sells the "Crack that numbs the pain" ...

Opening 12: "This is the Girl who's killer brain, smoking the Crack that numbs the pain, bought from the Boy feeling the heat ..."

We are shown woman, smoking. Her head too is upside down, her belly is large - is she pregnant? And then we are shown "the baby with nothing to eat, born of the girl who's killing her brain...". Finally ...

Opening 14

"And these are the Tears we cry in our sleep

that fall for the Baby with nothing to eat,

born of the Girl who's killing her brain,

smoking the Crack that numbs the pain,

bought from the Boy feeling the heat,

chased by the Cop working his beat,

who battles the Gang, fleet and elite,

that rules the Street of a town in pain

that cries for the Drug known as cocaine,

made from the Plants that people can't eat,

raised by the Farmers who work in the heat

and fear the Soldiers who guard the Man

who lives in the House that crack built."

"This is a book about choices." writes Michael Pritchard in the afterword, "... the author used his poetic voice to remind us the problem is out there. The illustrator used her artistic vision to bring the tragic nature of the problem powerfully alive. And the publisher chose to blend these visions into a book and use its profits (...) to help fight the problem. Together they have created a tool that can be used to open discussion and to help children learn to make the right choices. Together they have reminded us that in small and personal ways each of us has the power to change the world."

It is indeed a very powerful, though physically small, book and one I am certain can be used with teenagers and young adults in ELT contexts. I hope that in sharing this title, I have encouraged some teachers to take up the challenge.

Recommendation nº 6: The three little wolves and the big bad pig

2011-09-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

Front cover

I've decided to feature two recommendations this month, to keep with the theme of traditional stories. This is a wonderful title, and recommended by Helen Davies, an English teacher in a French state school. A great suggestion Helen, and I've had loads of fun looking at this picturebook, discovering all sorts.

Eugene Trivizas is a sociologist, with a PhD in criminology and one of Greece's leading children's authors. He's written over 100 children's books and this title was the first to be written in English. I've already featured a picturebook illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, and her delightfully detailed watercolour illustrations bring another dimension to Trivizas already very funny words.

The three little wolves and the big bad pig is of course a retelling of the traditional story, The three little pigs and highly suitable for older students. Helen has used this picturebook with teens.

The front cover is an illustration of The Three Little Wolves taking a break from building work, perched on scaffolding. Each is nibbling something meaty, a chicken drum stick or a hamburger. They look relaxed and happy, fastidious with checkered napkins on their laps and open lunch boxes at their sides. It's a great cover image setting the scene for the many building projects which we will be shown as the story progresses. However, only the three wolves appear on the front cover and they are without doubt the goodies, but try turning over to the back cover...

Back cover

The back cover continues the illustration with scaffolding stretching across the picture, and here we see the Big Bad Pig, climbing up a ladder and leering in the direction of The Little Wolves. It's a wonderful combination and well worth opening out the book to show the continuous image.
The title page shows us one of the creatures we will encounter later, a beaver, well-known in the animal world for his strong dams. He's shown next to a dirty bucket, but it's not clear till later what is actually in the bucket.

Recto 1

The first page is a single recto. A large amount of text explains which of the wolves is the oldest, "The first was black, the second was grey and the third was white." Mother wolf tells her cubs they have to go out into the big world. She warns them to take care of ... can you guess... the big bad pig! But look carefully at the illustrations. What is mother wolf doing? Painting her nails black! The fur on her head is in curlers and the end of her tail, which is sticking out of the bed covers, is also in curlers. She has a flippant look to her, tired of her cubs and ready for the good life again, the posh red slippers on the floor by the bed giving us an inkling of the way she likes to dress.
Off go the wolf cubs and they soon meet a kangaroo carrying red and yellow bricks.

Opening 2

As with the original story, the wolves are given what they ask for and they work hard to build their strong house of bricks. Their lawn grows quickly too, and one day while they are playing croquet the "big bad pig came prowling down the road". We are then treated to the well-known question answer routine, accompanied by Helen Oxenbury's delightful tongue-in-cheek paintings, showing a mean old pig and scared wolf cubs.

"Little wolves, little wolves, let me come in!"

"'No, no, no,' said the three little wolves. "By the hair on our chinny-chin-chins, we will not let you in, not for all the tea leaves in our china teapot!'"

Then, the pig "puffed and he puffed and he huffed and he huffed, but the house didn't fall down."

Opening 5

"But the pig wasn't called big and bad for nothing." What did he do? He got his sledgehammer and knocked the house down! Look carefully at the illustration, can you see the wolf cubs escaping? The black wolf is carrying a china teapot! They are very frightened.
We know how the story goes: the wolves need to build a stronger house, but what is stronger than bricks? Concrete! They meet a beaver who is making concrete in a mixer. He gives them all they need and they work hard on their new concrete home.

Opening 7

They are playing badminton when the big bad pig arrives. Opening 7 is a great double spread, a small black and white sketch of the pig, looking thoroughly mean and the wolves in grey tone against their grey concrete house. The pig is a bright pink peering over the wall in the background, can you see him?
We are told of the question answer routine, "Little, frightened wolves, let me in...." and then when we turn the page... "But the pig wasn't called big and bad for nothing."

Opening 8

He gets "his pneumatic drill and smashes the house down"! The close up of the pink pig with the wolves escaping in the background is hilarious. They have tied their sheets to make a rope and the teapot is there, ready to be grasped as they flee, "but their chinny-chin-chins were trembling and trembling and trembling."
An even stronger house is needed. Luckily for the wolves, they meet a rhino driving a lorry full of "barbed wire, iron bars, armour plates and heavy metal padlocks." "The three little wolves built themselves an extremely strong house" and felt "very relaxed and absolutely safe"!
This time the wolves were playing hopscotch when the pig arrives.

Opening 11

That pig is diffiuclt to stop. Alert students will notice the red dynamite sticks on the grass under the pig in verso and, during the usual dialogue and huffing and puffing, they already know how the big bad pig is going to destroy the house. "Frightened little pigs, with the trembling chins, let me in!"

Opening 12

And the little wolves are running off carrying their teapot, their fluffy tails scorched.
What could they do now? They were certain there was something wrong with their building materials. Luckily for them along came a flamingo pushing a wheelbarrow full of flowers.

Opening 13

And they decided to build a house of flowers. It had a wall of marigolds, one of daffoldils, one of pink roses and another of cherry blossom. The roof was made of sun flowers and they had a carpet of daisies. It was beautiful, but very fragile. And along came the big bad pig. "Little frightened wolves with the trembling chins and the scorched tails, let me in!"
And as the pig inhaled to blow down their house ...

Opening 15

The scent from the blossoms softened his heart and he realized how terrible he had been ... "he became a big good pig". He sang and he danced and made freinds with the wolves. They played "pig-pong and piggy-in-the-middle", and they invited him in for tea and they all lived happily ever after!

Back verso

Can you see? They are drinking tea from the teapot they salvaged from each house, as they ran for their lives.

Hilariously funny, and kids just love the absurdity of the pig's badness and the ever stronger houses culminating in a soft swaying flowery one. Brilliant adaptation, with stunning illustrations. It begs rereading, enabling students to discover threads of visual and verbal narratives: Visually they will pick up on the different playground games, the animals and their goods, the teapot at each escape. Verbally they will enjoy the cumulative greeting from the pig, who begins by calling the wolves, "Little wolves, let me in!", and finishes with, "Little, frightened wolves with the trembling chins and the scorched tails, let me in!" They'll join in the memorable dialogues, and will love saying, "But the pig wasn't called big and bad for nothing."

Helen describes using the book as a base for re-telling well-known stories, with students creating their own retold stories. Other writing activities could include:

Taking the view of the pig and describing being bad and then becoming good, and explaining why;
Becoming a reporter and writing up the story for a newspaper.
Writing a post card to mother wolf from the cubs, explaining the events, and the happy eneding.

These are challenging activities, but possible with older students who have a fair bit of language competece. This link, to a set of Scholastic activities, meant for mainstream learners but useful for ideas, may be of interest. Enjoy!

Recommendation nº 5: The gigantic turnip

2011-09-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

Front cover

The Gigantic Turnip, illustrated by Niamh Sharkey has been recommended by Teresa Fleta, a teacher, teacher educator and great friend, who lives in Madrid, Spain. I'd only seen this title in Portuguese, so it was good to order it in English and give it a good look over.

I've already featured a picturebook by Niamh Sharkey, an Irish illustrator who uses oil paints to create her big, bold illustrations. You can see her brush strokes in some of the backgrounds and they add a lovely textured feel to her work.

This particular picturebook is published by Barefoot Books, they have a very special publishing moto, here's a part of it: "Interactive, playful and beautiful, our products combine the best of the present with the best of the past to educate our children as the caretakers of tomorrow".

As you can see from the front cover the book comes with a CD which contains the narrated story - a nice addition, read by clear-voiced Ellen Verenieks.

We all know the Russian folk tale, made famous by Aleksei Tolstoy, about an old couple who plant some turnip seeds and one grows to such an enormous size that they can't pull it out without help from their animals. It's a cumulative story, getting longer and longer as more animals are called to help the old couple. Finally they manage to pull up the turnip with the help of a mouse and everyone eats a very large amount of turnip soup or stew. It's well known in ELT, and included in course books and reader sets.

Portuguese turnips

The big orange root vegetable we can see on the front cover is actually quite unlike a turnip. Turnips are white with a purpley top. The turnip in the illustration looks more like a swede, of similar shape, but more orangey in colour and completely different in taste. But this is a cultural thing, for in Ireland and Scotland, swedes are called turnips! In the States they're called swedish turnips. When I show this image to my students they can't quite match their Portuguese turnips with this yellow thing!

But let's look at the book, the back cover has a nice collection of other vegetables for us to look at, most of which are immediately recognisable.

Back cover

The half title page contains a small cameo of the elderly couple pulling at the turnip, an illustration which is also shown later in the story, and the copyright and title pages introduce us to some of the characters in the story, again snippets from within. They don't contribute in any way to the narrative, though children will comment on the large cow underneath the title during repeated reads, confirming it is the cow from the story.

The first spread introduces us to the couple, in their overgrown garden, with the verbal text appearing in the garden path, with the font changing size.

Opening 1

The following spreads set the scene, introducing the animals in the story, and the act of planting. Here are the animals. Note they start in the verso with the smallest of animals and finish in recto with the big brown cow.

Opening 2

We need rain for plants to grow, so along it comes beautifully depicted in this spread showing the dark night and the plants in the garden beginning to grow. Can you see the turnip leaves already big and strong?

Opening 4

We are told, not shown that the seasons pass, everything is harvested and that at the end of the row there is a gigantic turnip.

Opening 5

Nice use of space here, and children really get a feel for the size of the turnip. The enlarged font works well too. And so the next day the old man got up ... there's a lovely bit where the verbal text says, "the old man sat up in bed, sniffed the cool, late summer air and said, 'It's time for us to pull up that turnip.'", And he really did try, and here begins the cumulative, repetitive part of the story : "The old man pulled and heaved and tugged and yanked, but the turnip would not move." And so he calls his wife, and they "... pulled and heaved and tugged and yanked, but the turnip would not move." The woman fetched the brown cow.

Opening 9

Can you see the pigs in the background? On each occasion we are shown the animals who will be called to help when everyone is unable to budge the turnip. And of course they get smaller in size and larger in number. "The old man, the old woman, the big brown cow, two pot-bellied pigs, three black cats, four speckled hens, five white geese, and six yellow canaries, pulled and heaved and tugged and yanked. STILL the turnip would not move."

Opening 14

They were all exhausted! "But the woman had an idea." She found a mouse, who she caught using some cheese, and she took him outside to help.

Opening 17

And so now it was almost night time, they've spent all day trying to pull up this turnip! "The old man, the old woman, the big brown cow, two pot-bellied pigs, three black cats, four speckled hens, five white geese, and six yellow canaries, and the hungry little mouse pulled and heaved and tugged and yanked."

Opening 18

"POP!", every thing went backwards ... "The canaries fell on the mouse, the geese fell on the canaries... [and so on]. All of them lay on the ground and laughed." The turnip could almost be a planet in this illustration it is so big! Every one ate the huge turnip stew, but "the hungry little mouse ate most of all."

The mouse also has a lunar look to him in the illustration, with the night sky as a background.

Facing the verso illustration, you can see the CD and back flap with information about the illustrator, narrator and Barefoot Books. All nicely compact.

It's a nice version of the traditional story, with lovely illustrations. The verbal text is long, but much of it is repetitive, and the children will enjoy chorusing the different animals, especially "two pot-bellied pigs". Teresa didn't give me any follow up activities, but we can all imagine a fun dramatisation with masks and enough characters for a classroom of 25, if one child is the turnip! Great fun! But most of all read this several times over a number of lessons. The exposure to the rich language will help children remember it and they'll soon join in.

Thanks to Teresa for sharing!

There was an old lady

2011-09-11T11:08:00.000-07:00

A favourite traditional song, known and loved by most English speakers is I know an old woman who swallowed a fly. It's said to have an unknown author, but Copyright has been given to Alan Mills and Rose Bonne (1952), and there's a famous recording by Burl Ives which you can hear it on good old youtube:

It's a wildly extravagant, cumulative story of an old lady who swallows ever larger creatures and eventually dies. Plain and simple! Children love anything that makes the impossible possible, and this traditional song does just that! An old lady swallows a fly, a spider, a bird, a cat, a dog, a cow and finally a horse! The picturebook I'm featuring today is the award winning version of this song by Simms Taback, There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

Dust jacket front cover

The picturebook is a visual delight, the artwork is mixed media and collage on craft paper, using bright colours often against a black background, there is loads to look at and muse over.

I have a hardback edition, not sure there is a paperback one, at least I couldn't find it. The dust jacket cover has a hole cut into the paper where the old lady's mouth is, and we can see a fly wiggling around in the blackness. If you take the dust jacket off, there's another illustration:

Front cover

The mad looking lady is surrounded by flies, and if you look at the back covers, you will see a masterful collection of flies, all labelled and in neat rows. I was doubtful there really was such a thing as a robber fly or a sawfly - but Taback really does know his flies - they exist, though not as attractively decorated as they are in these illustrations! Before moving inside, I just want to draw your attention to the spine, which gives us the title, the author and the publisher names, all beautifully written on ripped pieces of coloured paper.

Spine

This ripped collage technique flows through the illustrations and is quite delightful.

Front endpapers

The endpapers are covered in tiny pieces of ripped paper - they look like multicoloured snow flakes in the very dark of night.

The copyright and title pages are a sudden contrast in bright orange, with all but one of the animals featured in the story, busily moving around in the illustrations. The fly from the front cover has buzzed across the spread and circled the old lady, who is seen as calm and relaxed in this cameo illustration - the only time she is ever seen looking normal and old lady-like! In the dedication to Peter Newell, Taback is openly acknowledging the contribution of illustrators at the beginning of the last century, who through their work paved the way for picturebooks as they are today. Peter Newell's book can seen in its entirety here if you are interested.

So let's get going with the song!

Opening 1

In wonderful picturebook fashion the spreads and illustrations follow a visual structure, which begins in opening 1, and works in sets of pairs. The verso page is a busy illustration full of all sorts of images, flowers and flying creatures all buzzing around together. Some are painted, some are collages - this page presents the creature the old lady will swallow and to help us there's a newspaper with telling headlines "Old lady swallows fly". The recto shows us the old lady, quite barmy, waving her umbrella and there's a smallish hole in the page, in the middle of her tummy, can you make it out? Notice also the words, on different coloured rectangles, even the full stop is on a separate bit of paper. "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly."

Turn the page and ...

Opening 2

We can see the fly in the lady's tummy, through the hole. "I don't know why she swallowed a fly." On the recto page, in that multicoloured snow we saw on the endpapers, "Perhaps she'll die" and some of the other animals in the story are commenting, all in rhyme. "I think I'll cry..."; "She gulped it out of the sky."; "But it's only a fly."; "Oh, my!"

And if we continue this pattern is repeated with the spider and so on ...

Opening 3

Opening 4

Can you see the recipe for Spider's Soup in the verso of opening 3? Notice also how whole sentences are featured on strips of coloured paper in recto. This is a feature which reappears on this recto page each time.

Each time we turn the page, the hole in her tummy gets bigger as it fills up ... here she is with the spider and the fly...

Opening 5

And here with the fly, spider, bird, cat and dog ...

Opening 11

I especially like the verso in opening 11, where we are shown the cow surrounded by flowers and packets from food made with milk, and of course the newspaper headlines, "Whole cow devoured".

Opening 12

Here's the second spread in this pair, opening 12. Look how the parts of the song are shown on different pieces of coloured paper, and for the first time we see the horse, he's remained incognito till now! So, "There was an old lady who swallowed a horse."

We know how the story ends don't we?

Opening 14

"She died of course!" And all the other animals lament, "I'm filled with remorse."; "It was the last course." etc... and right at the bottom of the recto page, a small self portrait by Taback, "Even the artist is crying ..."

Back verso

And here's the moral, "Never swallow a horse."

What a visual delight and so much there to go on and use in the classroom. The collage illustration begs to be imitated and played with by the children. Pages of ripped up paper, or mixing of paint and collage. Different colours on black is visually very striking, and the children's work would make a wonderful display.

Then there's the words and sentences on separate coloured paper, ideal for playing around with. Words can be made into sentences, also using punctuation. Sentences can be ordered to make the song. A great activity for primary children who are coming to grips with reading and writing in English. And lots of fun can be had with the rhyming words.

And as ever youtube has the film of the book, which is really well put together. It's followed by the song, so you can sing along, though it's a bit fast!

Old MacDonald with a twist

2011-09-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

Front cover

Traditional stories portrayed in picturebooks have been recommended by several colleagues, so I thought I'd do a month of posts on the theme of Traditional stories or songs in picturebooks and include at least two recommendations.

To start I'm going to feature one of my all time favourites, introduced to me by Opal Dunn, years ago!

Old MacDonald had a farm, is one of those songs that everybody, who is 'doing' farm animals, sings in ELT classes! But I was never really a great fan: the repeated refrain "With a bow wow here and a bow wow there. Here and bow, there a bow everywhere a bow wow..." etc was just too much for many of the early years' language learners I was working with and "EIEIO" was always rendered in a Portuguese pronunciation, as the song exists in translation in Portugal. But when I began using this picturebook, Old MacDonald, by Jessica Souhami, all that changed! Hearing the words clearly and slowly, in association with the pictures and fun font placement, enabled the children I was working with to imitate the English sounding "EIEIO" and to pick up that tricky refrain. But most of all it was such a fun experience as there's a wonderful, unexpected twist at the end, not to mention all the different ways the animals like to travel! It's brilliant!

If you take a look at the front cover, shown above, you can predict which animals will appear, can't you? Or can you? I like Old MacDonald's eye brows, I have a uncle who is a farmer and they are just like that! As a reading adult you will also notice that it's a "Lift the flaps!" book.

Title page

No exciting peritext, except if you look at the title page, which looks like the words are being trumpeted out of the page gutter. Notice how the designer has been included there: that's unusual on the title page, isn't it?

Opening 1

Here's the first spread, with the words of the song and a long-legged farmer striding across the page. It's interesting that he is moving right to left, normally movement is depicted from left to right. He's pulling something, but we can't quite make out what it is. Can you guess? Let's open the flap, can you see it? It's covering half the recto page.

Opening 1 + flap

It's "... a duck, EIEIO" Let's turn the page again...

Opening 2

And the song continues!

There's lots of interesting things to notice about these spreads. The illustrations are big and bold, collages of cut out shapes with simple line drawings. The font does some exciting things visually. In opening 2 the words flow out of duck's beak, rather like the title did on the title page. Then the font changes for the EIEIO and children notice this immediately. They are drawn to the visual letter shapes and like to point at each one as we say them together as the book progresses.

So, we've seen two spreads, or rather two and a half! They come in pairs like this through out. First spread shows the farmer and an animal in some sort of transportation, but we can only see a bit of the animal until we turn the flap; and the second spread depicts the creature visibly making its animal noises.

The pig arrives in a pram, here he is oinking ...

Opening 4

The children notice that the font represents a piggy tail immediately!

The sheep arrives in the back of a truck and the cow is travelling in a plane.

Opening 7 + flap

And children get such a kick of seeing the next opening with all the words in the cow's belly:

Opening 8

Many of them question how it was possible for the cow to fit into the plane. Clever children!

So what else do we have on farms? Horses, chickens, I wonder what's next, and it's in a rocket, WOW!

Opening 9 + flap

Of course it's a rocket, Martian's don't travel in any old truck! What a fun surprise! But what sound do Martians make?

Opening 10

"Beep!" Of course!

And the song comes to it's finale ... "Oh ..." Quick turn the page:

Opening 11

"EIEI ... " what's under the flap?

Opening 11 + flap

Nice! The farmer and his animals! Duck in a bath, pig in bed, sheep doing her knitting and the farmer and the cow having tea, with milk (of course!) And the silly Martian is up the chimney! What a groovy version of Old MacDonald ... and it just has to be read "Again!"

Print-salience

I just want to make a point about the different ways of showing the words in this picturebook. It's considered a "print-salient" picturebook, because the print attracts the children's attention. It doesn't mean that they will ignore the illustrations, far from it, they still focus on those almost exclusively especially if they aren't officially reading yet. But in a picturebook like this children do look at the words far more because they are part of the visual design of the picturebook. Some children will be affected by this design more than others, and will begin to associate the written word and its sound. Don't ignore this if you see or hear it happening, encourage children to make connections, and if possible leave the picturebook in the classroom, so children can browse through the pages, studying what interests them.

I love my white shoes

2011-08-28T11:21:00.000-07:00

Front cover

I'm not sure where I first saw Pete the cat being reviewed, but I came across him more than once. I ummed and ahhed but didn't buy the bright yellow book (my photo does not do it justice). Then Zoe from Playing by the book, wrote about Pete the cat on her blog. I followed the links to the creators telling their story to a group of pre-schoolers and I was hooked. Pete the cat: I love my white shoes was waiting for me in my pile of holiday post when I got back! I've been humming his song ever since! I've also been watching Youtube films of children retelling the story. I am well geared to sharing it with the first pre-school group I can get my hands on! There is nothing better than real children interacting with a picturebook to convince me that a picturebook will work.

So, Pete the cat: I love my white shoes is written by Eric Litwin and illustrated by James Dean. A dark blue cat in bright white sneakers. He is a cool dude.

End papers

The endpapers show us Pete staring up at four pairs of sneakers, no white pairs there, maybe that's because he's wearing them? Here's Pete walking down the road...

Title page

And so that's how we start, walking down the street...

Opening 1

That great big foot striding on, it's almost as though Pete is going to step on the reader! And watch that yellow bird, she gradually gets more involved with Pete's story. "Pete the cat was walking down the street in his brand-new white shoes. Pete loved his white shoes so much, he sang this song:"

Opening 2

"I love my white shoes, I love my white shoes, I love my white shoes." I can't say this without bursting into song, which is from watching the Youtube film and hearing the Harpercollins song download, and Pete's very cool dude stance is all the funnier for knowing the wacky tune. The rebus-like message in his speech bubble will attract the children's attention and so will the way the word for "white" has been highlighted in the recto page.

Opening 3

But wait, "Oh no! Pete stepped in a large pile of ... strawberries! What colour did it turn his shoes?" How he could have missed that VERY large pile of red fruit is beyond me, but he looks great right on the top of that pile of strawberries! And of course we all know the answer to the question, don't we?

Opening 4

You got it! RED! And there's one red shoe and lots of red all over the place. "Did Pete cry? Goodness, no! He kept walking along singing his song." Can you remember how the song goes?

Opening 5

And so it continues. Pete steps in a pile of blueberries, even bigger than the strawberry pile. In fact there are two piles now, one for Pete and one for the yellow bird. What colour did they turn his shoes? BLUE! There are two blue shoes in this illustration. (Many of us adults will wonder at this trasformation into plain old blue, for when blue and red come together we normaly get purple. But hey! No problem, it's all part of Pete's wild walk. And "Did Pete cry? Goodness, no! He kept walking along and singing his song." You may have noticed that Pete says "Everything is cool" in opening 4, and he has something different to say on each of these spreads... his blue shoes are "Awesome!" We see Pete sharing his umbrella with the yellow bird as he sings his song, lots of blue rain cascading around them.

You'll have picked up the visual rhythm and structure for sure, and it's repeated with brown, as Pete steps into a muddy puddle. Brown shoes, we see three brown feet and Pete is fine about it all, in fact he even thinks it's "Groovy!" He sings his song and drinks some coffee, which is also brown. But then he steps in a bucket of water... "and all the brown, and all the blue and all the red were washed away". The bird looks very worried!

Opening 12

Oh dear, what colour are his shoes now? You guessed it! WHITE! But now they are WET!" And we see four white sneakers again. "Rock and roll!" says Pete, and he sings his song ...

Opening 14

"I love my wet shoes, I love my wet shoes, I love my wet shoes." There's no stopping Pete! And... "the moral of this story is: No matter what you step in, keep walking along and singing your song ..."

Bach verso

"... because it's all good."

What a moral! Good for you Pete, a great way to help children to take it easy and look on the bright side of life. Love it!

"AGAIN!" The children call out... you'll be so tired of telling, and retelling this picturebook, I guarantee!

Watch the YouTube film and see just how much fun the storyteller and the kids are having. Watch and take notes, and use some of the ideas for your own storytelling techniques. Really, the pauses, the sound effects and the gestures are all excellent ways to get your students, and you, super motivated and enjoying the experience.

HarperCollins have a collection of printables for some of their books, and there's one for Pete the cat. If you want to see their other printables click here.

And if you haven't already, check out the link to Zoe's blog, where she shares the fun coloured playdough she made with her two girls, following on from the idea of fruit dyes. A great followup activity.