I'm in love with ... me!

An inky squiggle by Lucy Cousins from I'm the Best!

And so to continue with the being-in-love theme, but in a quirky sort of way... I'd like to talk about I'm the Best, by Lucy Cousins.  I hope you are following!

Cousins is best known for her Maisy books, which she began creating twenty years ago. If you aren't familiar with her work, here's an interesting interview with her on the Book Trust website. 

I'm the Best is slightly different in style to the Maisy books we are all so familiar with.  When I got my copy a couple of weeks ago, I chuckled to myself as I turned the pages, quite amazed at this style I'd not seen her do before.  The Maisy books, and another of my favourites, Hooray for Fish (which I'll talk about one day), are usually illustrated against colourful backgrounds, with thick painted outlines, and bright primary colours.  But I'm the Best uses white to a maximum, leaving the backgrounds empty of colour washes.  And she uses ink instead of paint.  The inks give a sort of blotchy, wild effect, sort of off handish, making the final product look as though it's a collection of rough sketches, and almost child-like too: her outlines are done with a blasé-style black crayon.  On some of the pages she's let the paper soak up the inks and the result is a chance one.  They are lovely illustrations and children enjoy them too. 

I'm the Best is about dog, who thinks he's the best.  He has four friends who he loves, but that doesn't stop him telling them he can do things better than they can.   It turns out that they teach him a lesson, in a kind way, and he realises that it's important for everyone to have that 'I'm the best' feeling!   

The front cover introduces our main character, Dog, waving his arms and looking downright delighted with life! Endpapers are bright orange paper and provide a nice introduction to the blotchy inks that follow.  The copyright page is dotted with inky blobs, all extending waterlogged tendrils into the paper.  Makes me want to get some inks and have a go (and that is a possible post-picturebook activity). The title page also has our dog protagonist. The font is hand-written by Lucy Cousins - this is one of her trademarks - so it's uneven and irregular and adds to the spontaneous effect she cleverly creates. 

And so Dog is presented amongst flowers introducing himself as "... the best." 

Next spread shows us his friends, "Ladybird, Mole, Goose and Donkey", standing in a line, going from small to big. Dog loves his friends, "... they're brilliant", but he's the best!    It's a well balanced spread: the two sets of animals are facing each other, but the words separate them.  That's important.  

The following spreads show Dog being the best: running faster than Mole, "I won. I'm the best." Digging holes better than Goose, "I won. I'm the best." Being bigger than Ladybird, "I won. I'm the best." Swimming better than Donkey, "I won. I'm the best." What a exuberant expanse of water Cousins' has created. You can almost feel Donkey's splashes!

"I'm the best at everything", say's Dog.    Look at those 'I'm the best' squiggles: delightful! 

Poor Donkey, Goose, Mole and Ladybird.   They do look sad...

... they are sad, until they realise that in fact, Dog has got it wrong. Mole "can dig holes much longer and much deeper"; Goose  "can swim much faster"; Donkey is "much bigger", and of course Ladybird "can fly much better" than Dog.  So in fact his friends are much better than he is. Poor dog, his face gets more wretched, as we see his friends prove their worth.  In this last double spread, can you see the grey sky over Dog's head, in comparison to Ladybird's bright blue one? 

Dog realises he's "... rubbish at everything"; that he's a "... SHOW OFF". And so he apologizes to his friends. Well done Dog!  They hug and reassure him, "Don't worry.  You are the best at being our best friend. And you are the best at having beautiful fluffy ears.  And we love you", (the last line is slightly bigger for emphasis), and the five friends are hugging each other. 

A happy ending... with a twist - if we turn over, Dog is back to his old ways ... "Oh phew! Obviously having beautiful fluffy ears is the most important thing. So I AM the best."

Don't you ever learn Dog? 

A picturebook with a message which can be used with pre-school and primary.  It supports the development of emotional intelligence, providing children with visual evidence of feelings and emotions, helping them understand their own as well as others.  Quite brilliant!

And if you get the chance, do experiment with inks, kids will love the experience!

A book about old age

February is the month of relationships, Valentines Day and all that, so I thought I'd look at a picturebook I received just before Christmas. It's about an old lady who becomes a widow after 56 years of marriage. I read about it in an issue of Carousel.  The description intrigued me, and so I ordered it from the Book Depository.  The paperback isn't out yet, so it cost nearly €11,00, but it was well worth it!

The author/illustrator, Cesili Josephus Jitta, is Dutch, and Lola and the rent-a-cat was first published by a Belgian publisher in 2007, it came out in the UK in August 2010.  It's good to know that the publisher, Francis Lincoln, is bringing translated books onto the English market.  

Here's how they describe the book: "After the death of her husband John, Lola finds the days long and empty. One day she goes online and discovers www.rentacat.com. How will she choose which cat to rent, and could this be the start of a beautiful new friendship? Ceseli Josephus Jitta's delightful illustrations will amuse young and old alike, while the ultimately uplifting story of how a very old lady finds life is worth living after bereavement can be used to gently introduce very young children to the subject of old age and death. Translated from the Dutch, Lola and the Rent-a-Cat has been nominated for several prizes and translated into four languages."

As with all hardback books, it's solid, weighty and large.  Jitta's style is clean and simple.  I can't find any information about her technique, but it looks like she creates collages from her prints and other things like newspapers and ledger paper. She uses an interesting colour palette, bright colours: greens, yellows and oranges with purples and blues and reds.  Lovely.  

The cover introduces us to the two protagonists, Lola and the rent-a-cat.  They are supporting each other, the cat leaning in from the left, Lola from the right.  For cat lovers this is a very cat-like pose, leaning in for affection.  Puuurfect!  Lola is a grey haired, wrinkly lady with her cleavage showing.  In the background there's a foliage pattern and if we look closely we can see that the whole image is printed on ledger paper.   I didn't notice when I first received the book, and since noticing it's intrigued me, why ledger paper? It appears through out the book. 

The endpapers are the rich maroony pattern of foliage we saw on the cover.  You can recognize poppy heads and fern leaves amongst the weeds. 

The title page is simple, a cream page of ledger paper, with a cat, who we later discover is the rent-a-cat. Jitta has skillfully drawn the outline and added quick bobs of paint to create a muzzle, paws and ears.  Nice.
The first and last pages of the book are different.  The ledger paper is absent and Jitta has created washes of colour for the sky.  

The first page shows us a red evening sky, and Jitta and her husband, John, are sitting on their blue bench, together. Jitta wears the same clothes throughout, a red dress, low cleavage, and white trainers.  She's a cool old lady!   "Lola and John have been married since they were young. Together they can reach anywhere and together they stay balanced.  Together they look after each other and together they remember the shopping list."  As you can see from the illustrations, they show us exactly how this happens, scrubbing each other's back, filling each other's glass etc. 

We are shown how they get older, needing glasses and a Zimmer frame; the text hints at what might be wrong with John, "Sometimes John is sad for no reason and loses his way around the house." 

Then on a deep, dark red background the words say, "One day John falls over. His heart stops beating." And the opposite page is a deep brown, John is still on his chair, his hat on his head, but he's fallen over, and Lola is standing over him.  The following pages are grey. And so "After fifty-six years she is alone again."   She's propping herself up with her walking stick, John is no longer there to balance her.  "Her days are long.  There is no one to look after any more. She reads, she watches TV and she surfs the net."

Now that is one cool old lady! And we are back to a bright green background.  "One night she visits www.rentacat.com" In Lucinda Handwriting font we read: "Experienced cats offer you company and affection in return for board and lodging for any length of time."

Against a bright yellow background we are shown all these cats. They come in numbers "26 Gus"; "97 Fred"; "108 Pete" "But number 313 is her favourite."

"313 TIM

Homely, slightly older cat

Loves attention and care

Fond of diet food

Click here to order."

Lola is excited, her heart beats faster and she completes the form. "Lola.fink@hotmail.com wants to order Tim, number 313."  Tim is with her the very next day. And what fun they have. "They are together …" shopping and eating; she even watches Tim poo, poop scoop at hand.

"… all of the time." Tim cleans himself on a stool as Lola has a bath and they sleep together, Lola on the right and Tim on the left. Together they sit on the same blue bench that Lola and John sat on, Lola drinks tea and Tim purrs. And as she sits she thinks of the past, of a cat she got as a small girl, (not unlike Tim); of going to see romantic movies with her friend; of meeting and falling in love with John.

... shown on a lovely double spread with a blue green water background, and no ledger paper, with ripped vegetable paper circles representing the ripples of water. And finally of sitting on the blue bench with John, drinking tea and loving each other. 

And the last page shows us a smiling Lola, rubbing her aged back; a keen, inquisitive Tim looking lovingly up at her, both surrounded by vegetation, a blue sky with a sleepy sun behind them.  "Off to bed, Tim.  Tomorrow is another day."

In the Carousel review, Chris Stephenson describes the story finishing "in the ascendent, with the promise of what tomorrow may bring."   It is indeed a positive ending and a thought provoking book, bringing a message we rarely think about, especially with our language students. It deals with decrepit old age, death, becoming a widow and loneliness.  Difficult topics but brilliantly brought together here by Jitta.  Isn't this a book  we could use with slightly older students?  It would provoke discussion for sure.  What do you think?

Emily Gravett's wolf

The last of this series of posts on Emily Gravett shares her first book, Wolves, for which she won the Kate Greenaway Medal  in 2005.  Here are a couple of the reviews and if you want to see more here's the link:

"Emily Gravett is all for creating active readers with her debut picturebook Wolves. Light as a whisker, she offers playful lessons in black humour, irony, and in relationships between words and images, reality and fiction." (Jane Doonan, Times Educational Supplement)

"The charm of this book also lies in Emily’s delightful melange of skilful drawing with a big soft pencil, textured gouache, collage and generous use of white space." (Brighton Evening Argus)

Wolves is non-fiction made fiction.  We learn about wolves, in fact this is what we learn:

"GREY WOLVES live in packs of between two and ten animals.  They can survive almost anywhere from the Arctic Circle to the outskirts of towns and villages. They have sharp claws, bushy tails and dense fur, which harbours fleas and ticks. An adult wolf has 42 teeth. Its jaws are twice as powerful as those of a large dog.  Wolves eat mainly meat. They hunt large prey such as deer, bison and moose.  They also enjoy smaller mammals, like beavers, voles and rabbits."

But that's not what the story is about. The visual story uses this simple description very cleverly, focusing on the journey a little rabbit makes to the library, to borrow a book about wolves.  The visual quickly takes over and leaves the fairly banal description of the life of a wolf to one side, for the wolf in the book, becomes a real life wolf and the rabbit becomes his real life dinner! 

Does anyone remember books with fabric covers? The book rabbit takes out of the library is such a book, covered in red cloth with the title stamped boldly in black.  The first page of our picturebook is this cloth covered, front cover; the endpapers, belong to this red book, buff brown with a pattern of angular lines.  After reading the story and returning to these endpapers they no longer represent arbitrary marks, but remind us of claws and scratches... but that's for after. 

So we've opened our book, on the next page, the copyright and title pages, we are shown a front door mat scattered with the early morning post.  The copyright information appears on a postcard. There's a wolf stamp and the post mark is the Macmillan logo.  Delightful!  The title page is a leaflet from the library.  About?  You guessed it, a book called "Wolves" by "Emily Grrrabbit"  "NEW IN AT YOUR LIBRARY!" There are more puns if we look closely: "West Bucks public burrowing library", and, "Burrow WOLVES and other rip-roaring tails at your local library NOW!"  All these are visually presented as though stamps and stickers and are as much part of the illustration as anything else.  

"Rabbit went to the library. He chose a book about ... " and we are shown what he takes out, not told!  The rabbit innocently holding the red, cloth covered book with WOLVES in bold black letters.  If you look at the verso page, there's a discarded book about rabbits on the shelf.  I wonder who was looking at that?

Rabbit takes Wolves home, again we are shown not told.  A double spread with the library sketched in the back ground and the rabbit hugging the book.  Can you see the wolf sculptures on the building? The dimensions are ingenious, for the rabbit is headless, and the book fills the whole of the recto page.  It's like we are beginning all over again: this is the cover.  

And we ARE beginning again, for when we turn over we see the endpapers, those not-so-arbitrary marks on a buff brown background, with a neat little library card, which you can actually remove.  Here's a closeup: the card has a coffee stain on it and rabbit puns on the stamps and codes.  If you turn the card over there's a little sketch of two rabbits in love, their ears entwined in a heart shape. 

Rabbit reads the book as he walks home.  We simultaneously see rabbit looking into the book, and the actual book pages, which are behind him.   We are told that "GREY WOLVES live in packs of between two and ten animals", the illustration shows the wolves angrily emerging from a box, as though they've been left on a supermarket shelf, like a six-pack.  "They can survive almost anywhere from the Arctic Circle ..." and we are shown two growling wolves peering from behind  a snowman!  "... to the outskirts of towns and villages".  

The book pages are now almost as big as the double spread and the wolf is no longer in the book, instead standing behind the book, wearing clothes.  It's a menacing picture.  Rabbit is oblivious to all but the book he holds in his hands.  

Then it begins to get serious.  For we are shown close up shots of bits of wolf, first his feet and the words say, "They have sharp claws... ", rabbit patters on past the long sharp claws; "..bushy tails... " rabbit walks up the tail; "... and dense fur, which harbours fleas and ticks." Rabbit is deep in fur, with fleas jumping around him, but he's still reading his book.  

Now rabbit is on the wolf's nose.  The wolf has his tongue out,  his teeth are visible and he's got a napkin tied around his neck.  We are told "An adult wolf has 42 teeth. Its jaws are twice as powerful as those of a large dog."  

" Wolves eat mainly meat. They hunt large prey such as deer, bison and moose.  They also enjoy smaller mammals, like beavers, voles and ..." Our little rabbit is shown silhouetted between the wolf's eyes. He's panic stricken; the book is falling from his hands.   

Turn the page, quick... GULP, the red cloth cover is all scratched and tattered and a bit of ripped paper tells us " ... rabbits." Arghhh.  That's terrible. Poor rabbit. 

Turn the page and we have an announcement with a cream background calming after the ripped red cloth book cover,  "The author would like to point out that no rabbits were eaten during the making of this book.  It is a work of fiction. And so, for more sensitive readers here is an alternative ending."  That's good to know! And just as we were given two beginnings, we have two endings.  Rabbit and wolf are eating a jam sandwich together, the illustration is made of ripped bits of drawing, as though Gravett has collected the pieces after the terrible rabbit eating event and made it all better.  And of course they live happily ever after!

But don't stop turning the pages; for we are back in rabbit's house, the front door mat is covered in mail.  This page is a treasure trove of rabbit puns.  A Chinese restaurant called "The Burrowed Wok", offering "Free lawn crackers" and "Morning dew"; a letter from "Jack O'Hare", from "Angora Organics" a gardening catalogue.  There's also a letter from the library, which we can actually open and read.  Oh my goodness, the book is overdue.  Does that mean he didn't get home after all?  Oh dear. 

Isn't it amazing that this is Emily Gravett's first book?  She's a genius! To take a simple description of wolves and turn it into something as visually exciting as this. WOW! 

And of course if you really want to you could use the wolf descriptions as a spring board for describing other animals, but don't let that spoil the magic that children find in these pages.  

Emily Gravett has produced two books a year since her debut in 2005, that's not bad going!  They aren't all easily readable in our ELT classes, but most are.  I'll probably come back to some of the titles in later blog posts, so watch out for them. 

• Wolves (2005)
• Orange Pear Apple Bear (2006) 
• Meerkat Mail (2006)
• Monkey and Me (2007) 
• Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears (2007) 
• The Odd Egg (2008)
• Spells (2008)
• The Rabbit Problem (2009)
• Dogs (2009) 
• Blue Chameleon (2010)
• Cave Baby (2010)
• Wolf won't bite (2011) 

Her latest, Wolf won't bite is in the post as I write this,  can't wait to see it. This is the synopsis:

"Take your seat in the front row and watch in wonder as three cheeky little circus pigs make a wild wolf jump through hoops (literally), endure feats of astounding derring-do, and even withstand perilous games of dress-up. Safe in the thought that Wolf Won't Bite! they even put their heads between his jaws ...but can you push a wolf too far? Sure to strike a chord with anyone who has both a pet and a young child, this is a very funny and playful story with a snappy ending!"

Emily Gravett's bear

And on we go with my very favourite of Emily Gravett's  books, Orange Pear Apple Bear.  This little book is a gem. It's difficult to talk about the illustrations alone, for the pictures and words are truely united. Emily Gravett uses just five words, 'orange' 'pear' 'apple' 'bear' 'there', and with them she creates a beautifully illustrated, delightfully visual, word play.  Superb.

In a skillful "done-in-a-sec" look, she uses watercolour and crayon, against a clear, white background. Her illustartions ooze volumn, leaving you wanting to eat the fruit and hug the bear.   In fact the whole thing is delicious!  The whole thing, from cover, through the front matter, the endpapers,  the copywrite page and the title page, all carefully thought out to bring a whole visual experience. So how does she manage a whole book with just five words? By combining the visual and the verbal to imply a subtle humour in the simple placement of two words. 

The cover presents our four objects, a clever bear, balancing three pieces of fruit on his head.  He has a querky sort of look, his eyes dots of cheeky black, his eyebrows raised.  

The front endpapers, show us a neat row of the three pieces of fruit again, and if you take a peek at the back endpapers you'll see that time has passed and the same pieces fruit are shown nibbled, munched or as  piles of peel.  This row of fruit follows us as we turn to the copyright and title pages.  Publishing info is in a neat pear shape, the Macmillan Children's Book logo makes a great flag-like leaf.  And the title page brings our bear back, peeking from the fold, the three fruit now balancing on his paw.  He is good!

And so we start, (as if we hadn't already!).  Object and label, visual mirrors the words, as though presenting each performer before the play begins.  But even with just four words and four illustrations, we are already rhyming.  "Orange" "Pear" (pause as you turn the page) "Apple" "Bear".  

And the bear is doing a sort of "Ta, ta!"  pose! His arms stretched out, "Here I am" kind of thing.  Yeah! 

"Apple, pear" (pause as you glance across the spread) "Orange bear".  

Simple change of word order, lack of punctuation and orange has become an adjective, and our modest bear looks like he's trying to hide his privates!  Then it happens again.  "Orange pear" "Apple bear", and our bear's round bottom is apple-like, round and juicy, pinky green.  What a surprise!  

Can you guess what happens next? Of course you can, like all good stories it's predictable.  A coy bear is sitting with his back to us, and he's a lovely pear shape, a green pear shape.  "Apple, orange, pear bear."  

Then a change of rhythm, "Orange, pear, apple, bear".  Punctuation appears, big time, and some children will notice this, and over re-reads they may even associate the way you read this page, and the next, with the appearance of these commas.   

"Apple, bear, orange, pear".  The words are falling diagonally from top to bottom on the recto page, visually reflecting the fruit the bear has thrown.  Then "Orange, bear" and the orange is gone.  

The way we read this phrase could imply a query, maybe even suprise.  And each fruit now gets eaten - the bear's large mouth, open wide, catching the fruit; biting the fruit. "Pear, bear" "Apple, bear" ... And he's gone! "There!"  

The endpapers show us the remains of our story ... cores and peel.   

Now wasn't that amazing?  So simple, so clever.  Great illustrations, rhyme, rhythm and repetition, fun with punctuation, and a silly end. What more could you wish for from a picturebook?

Younger children will love "Orange Pear Apple Bear",  and request it again and again.  They'll pick up the rhythmic words quickly and help you tell the story over re-reads.  They'll pause when you do, run when you do, be flamboyant when you are, imitating and learning as they go. And you never know they might start drawing their own fruit and animal mixtures and bring you some delightful drawings.  

Emily Gravett's chameleon

Image on opening page of Emily Gravett's website 

Happy New year!

I thought I'd start this year with a look at one of my favourite illustrators, Emily Gravett. There's an interesting article to be read in the Telegraph from 2007, which gives you an idea of how she began her life as an illustrator. 

What I love about her illustrations is that they are so skillfull - she's a good old fashioned drawer - and most of her books are brilliantly illustrated using crayon / graphite, with watercolour washes.  She also uses ripped paper collages in some titles.  Here's a great video of her drawing "Cave Baby" for a book she illustrated with Julia Donaldson (author of The Gruffalo)

I bought Wolves first, her debut book and an award winning title, and then it was just a case of collecting them -  lovely, lovely illustrations alongside a great sense of visual humour.  

I thought I'd share Blue Chameleon in my first post about her. It has a simple minimal text, and lovely sketchy illustrations.  Here you can see the covers, front and back, which introduce our hero, a sad looking, blue chameleon.  On the back cover there are three adjectives, each one crossed out, describing our chameleon and at the same time giving us a clue about what happens inside the book.  

As with all good picturebooks the endpapers contribute to the narrative, the front endpapers show us a glum looking pale chameleon.  And the copyright / dedication page is lovely too.   The information is shown in the shape of a chameleon!

And so the story continues with an image of chameleon, sitting in a pose similar to that on the front cover, with a thought bubble saying, "I'm lonely".  The words describe the chameleon "Blue chameleon", but blue is referring to his mood and his colour.   Each page has lots of white, which enhance the drawings and make them all the more stunning. The chameleon changes colour and shape depending on what he sees. And each time there's a speech bubble which brings something extra and humorous to each spread.  As you can see from the image below, the chameleon represents the colour, and each object is drawn and labelled neatly on each facing page.  We could say it was rather like a concept book, to reinforce colours and adjectives, but it's one with a difference for there's a story there too.  

As we turn the pages, visually there's always a pattern, the chameleon remains on the left and the object on the right. 

... and so the chameleon meets a pink cockatoo and says "Hello Hello Hello"; a swirly snail, and says "Nice to meet you"; 

... a brown boot (a cowboy boot) and says, "Howdy" of course!; a stripy sock and says "Can I hang out with you?"; a spotty ball (purple spots, which he imitates beautifully) and says "Pssst"; a gold fish, whose scales he cleverly captures, and he just blows silent bubbles.

Then finally he meets a green grasshopper  and he jumps across the double spread for the first time, breaking the visual routine, it's quite shocking to see him in desperation, with a stripy yellow / green belly, imitating the grasshopper and calling out, "Come back".  Poor chameleon.

And that's it.  He gives up.  We see him lying on a rock, all grey. Holding his head and visibly sighing. Notice how the words have returned to left and right, but the chameleon is mostly on the right hand, recto page. 

The penultimate page is all white, "White page", but if you look closely you can see a relief outline of the chameleon lying down and a hand is extended from off page, a hand similar to chameleon's, and a speech bubble "Hello?". That question mark is all important.  I've mentioned speech bubbles before, but children love them in this book and they begin reading them very quickly.  They certainly notice the question mark as it is the first bit of punctuation so far. And yikes, turn the page.   "Colourful chameleons"  greeting one another. 

A great ending, and the back endpapers contribute.  Different from the front ones, showing the two, colourful chameleons and a butterfly.  Off they go, no longer lonely.  Hooray!

Couldn't get much simpler really and such humour too.  Younger kids love this title and chant the colours and objects along with you after just a few readings.  They also enjoy listening to what the chameleon says, and laughing at the jokes.  "Pssst" is their favourite! 

Petr Horácek and pre-school books: part 3 (the Christmas goose)

Don't worry I shan't be cooking Suzy for Christmas!  (My son always asks for a beef stew, cooked for hours in port and Guinness ... much nicer!)  But our Suzy Goose does make a good Christmas story and an apt posting for the last of my December musings. And so here is Suzy Goose and the Christmas star 

Petr Horácek's Suzy is the same cut out goose with visible pencil lines around the edge, but his backgrounds are much looser in this picturebook.  You can see from the front page here that his Christmas tree is very jaggedy, as though he's used a spatular to paint.  But it does give us a lovely outdoor feel and the snow looks wonderland-like, thick and loose. 

The front endpapers are indeed whole pages of snow, with symmetrical snowflakes drawn here and there.  In fact, there is so much snow that when you turn to the dedication and title pages, it's just as profuse.  We see Suzy under the title, marching in her headlong manner into the book's following pages. 

Suzy and her friends are gathered around a tree.  The illustrations show us several geese and charming illustrations of a cow, a pig and a donkey, standing outside a warm looking stable.  Indeed.  The Christmas tree is lovely, but they all agree that something is missing.  "It needs a star on top," honked Suzy.  "Just like the one in the sky.  I'll get it." 

A lovely blotchy night sky and her geese friends are quite different, drawn in wax and painted over in the night sky blue.  They look ghostly.   And off goes Suzy, she dived from the top of the hill, slid down super fast and "Whoooosh flew high in the sky."  She is really a comet goose!  But isn't it a great illustration?  Children notice the words "Whoooosh" as it's part of the illustration and will point it out. 

We all know it's impossible to get a star by whooshing.  And of course Suzy didn't get "... quite high enough. Splat!"  But she had another plan. She climbed onto a fence.  Here is the lovely four framed spread, showing the sequence of actions ..."But not quite high enough. Splat!" The kids will notice "Splat" too! 

She also tries climbing a pile of logs, again there are four frames showing the sequence of actions, "But not quite high enough. Splat!" So now she thinks she'll just walk towards it.  She really is a convincing 'Silly Goose!'  We can see snow and the star, almost obliterated in the top corner of the double spread.   And then when we turn over... yikes, no star, and poor Suzy Goose is snow bound, and just a bit sad.

"I can't reach the star and I'm very far from my friends." 

 And here she is  all alone. "She was lost."  

The children will have accompanied Suzy in feeling positive and full of good ideas to feeling down right glum.  Petr Horácek successfully brings us to a climax here.  Brrr it does look cold, what's going to happen to silly Suzy? 

That's when she hears a noise, "Ding, Honk, Ding, Honk".  We know the 'Honk' belongs to her  goosey friends, but the 'Ding'?  Well I didn't show you the page, but the friendly cow has a nice bell around her neck! But it is a good puzzle for the children, as they are at first stumped by this sound, which isn't animal like at all. Also beware... animal sounds change in different languages.    So 'honk' is odd too if you haven't already played with animal sounds. 

And we see Suzy retrace her steps, walking, climbing the pile of logs, going over the fence and finally up the hill she so gracefully whoooosed down!  A lovely way to remember the sequence. And of course every one is very happy to see Suzy.  But it was her goosey friends who help her find the star in the end, for they were craning their necks upwards, and sure enough, the star was sitting right on top of the Christmas tree. 

"And it looked magical!"

"'Happy Christmas,' honked Suzy Goose with all her friends." 

They are all in the shed now, warm and safe and ready for Christmas. And when we turn to close the book and we turn to the back endpapers, that wonderland-snow scene, and there's a star blinking at us in the top right hand corner. Lovely!

A simple story but what wonderful snowy creations Horácek has given us, using his lovely painterly brush, allowing bits of blue to show through his snowy pages imitating that special reflection of the world that snow has.  No need to do anything but tell this story and tell it many times over.  Children love the silliness of Suzy and her sound effects, and they can feel that cold snow too.  A super pre-school Christmas book! 

All that's left is for me to say is, "Thank you for reading my blog over the last seven months, festive greetings to you and happy 2011!"