A fun loving grandad

Front cover

Just like by Lynda Waterhouse and Arthur Robins was one of nine books in a collection I featured in a publication by Mary Glasgow Scholastic, Realbooks in the primary classroom, sadly now out of print.   Just Like was published in 2000 and is available very cheaply on the secondhand markets via Amazon.  I'm featuring it on my blog because it's an example of how picture and word are needed together to get the whole meaning.  It's a great little book, and I selected it nearly a decade ago not because of its word-picture interaction but because of its topic and the structures held therein.  I'm ashamed now that it was the words that attracted me to this title, but very glad that as I've learned more about different ways the pictures and words animate each other,  I've come to appreciate the irony which is created when they come together here. 

Back cover

This is the back cover and it explains what this picturebook is about - A boy and a man are  peering up at the framed words... huum I wonder who Sam is like?  If we return to the front cover, we realise these must be all Sam's Aunts and Uncles.  What a motley crew!  Could the red headed boy be Sam?

Copyright and title pages

There's a fun dedication from Lynda Waterhouse to all her aunts and uncles, which might interest the children you are sharing this book with.    This must be Sam, shown looking hot under the colar and sporting an Aunty-like lipstick mark on his cheek.  Bother those aunts! We can see four of them on the title page... it must have been the one with the lipstick!

We begin with the family get together when Sam was born.  A typical British street, with houses which are all the same yet different and a crowd of family members arriving.  

Opening 01

We have no idea who they are, least of all whether the biker is anything to do with the family at all.  Slowly we are introduced to the relations, but you have to be alert, or you'll miss the clues! 

Opening 02

"'Sam looks just like you,' Great Aunt Bertha said to Dad." Can you see the fat Aunt pointing?  That's Great Aunt Bertha!   On turning the page we see that not all the family were in the living room...

Opening 03

Grandad wasn't there!  Look at him!  A wild Grandad!  Notice how the words tell us Grandad as "playing outside", but the pictures show us that he's being very clever with a skateboard!  

This pair of spreads has set us up for the rhythm we will encounter as we continue.  First we are shown a scene with all the family, except Grandad (for now we look for him and see he is never there!), comparing Sam to one of his relations. Then when we turn the page, or move from verso to recto and we see Sam's Grandad doing something completely unexpected!  We are encouraged to turn the page because a sentence is left half finished, "They all munched and nodded ..." [page turn] "... except Grandad. (...)".  But of course we want to turn the page because we know Grandad will be doing something silly! The more this happens the more we want to turn the page and the funnier the story becomes!

Sam is told he has eyes like his Mum ... "They all nodded ..." [page turn] "... except grandad who was racing down the hill." We see him with a group of happy children on a snow sled! 

At a cousin's wedding, Sam was compared to his shy Uncle Norris ... Look at grandad!

Opening 06

He's practising his magic tricks ... practising!  He isn't very good yet!

Sam is told he is a show off like Great Uncle Bernard, he's musical like Auntie Rita, and he has delicate skin like Great Aunt Bertha.  Until on Sam's 8th birthday, which we know because we can count the candles on his cake, he was asked to make a wish.  Every one smiled ...

Opening 12

... except Sam! Oh my goodness is he upset?   Sam was tired of being compared to all his family.  "I am me. And the only person I am like is ME." Not only did the candles blow out, but ...

Opening 13

"The jellies wobbled. The sausages shivered.  The crisps curled.  Nobody said a word."  We are shocked for two reasons, first we have been led to believe that Sam is a quiet chap, who takes all the fuss in his stride, and second the rhythm we have become used to has been broken.  Not to worry, it's soon back... Aunty Vera can't stop herself...

Opening 14

 Finally Grandad takes some notice!   

Opening 15

Sam gets to go on the bike with his grandad and off they go! 

I selected this picturebook to be used with older primary. The humour is perfect and there's a some challenging language there, as well as lots to look for and at in the illustrations. The language, "to look like [someone]" and "to be like [someone]" is used very clearly and the children can have fun using it to for their own personal descriptions.   They can also have a hilarious time describing some of Sam's family, who are portrayed beautifully in the illustrations.  As ever it's a book which needs to be returned to, as there is so much in the illustrations, too much to take in with one encounter.  Leave the picturebook in the classroom and let the children browse through it.  They'll be giggling to themselves as they do!

If you have a moment, check out the other books Arthur Robins has written / illustrated.  There's a nice collection of alternative traditional tales, with titles like Little Red Riding Wolf, and  Ghostyshocks and the three scares - well worth collecting for slightly older children. 

That's one cheeky Gorilla!

Front cover

June has been a busy month, so my posts have been erratic, apologies to those of you who follow this blog regularly. 

As possible further titles for my blog posts in June I've been musing over some of the picturebooks that appear in ELT resource books or which have written about in articles / chapters.    I thought I'd start with a title from the latter: one of my favourite picturebooks, Good Night Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann. Peggy Rathmann is an American author illustrator, well known for her picturebook, Officer Buckle and Gloria, which won the Caldecott Award in 1996 and Ruby the copycat, her first picturebook.  Good Night Gorilla was published in 1994, and nominated an ALA Award.  

Good Night Gorilla is atypical of a picturebook, as it contains 40 pages instead of 32. Many  of the pages are wordless, so it might be considered challenging for an EFL / ESL teacher.  It's one of my favourites for the two stories we are given, the one told in the words (when they exist) and the other shown in the pictures.   Let's take a look:

Back cover and front cover

The front and back covers together present both the setting and all but one of the characters: a zookeeper, who is locking up for the night, a cheeky gorilla, who is obviously key (excuse the pun!) to the story and a group of soft toy-like zoo animals. The Gorilla is looking ut at the child reader, his finger requesting silence, "Shhhh, don't tell!". That little grey chap pulling a banana is an armadillo!  None of my Portuguese pre-school children know what this is, as it's natural to the Americas, but they certainly have fun finding out about it and it's a word they rarely forget!  Notice the moon above the 'I' in NIGHT, an aspect of the font which children also pick up on and enjoy. 

Title page 

I only have paperback editions, in which there are no endpapers, but the title page shows us a night sky with the characteristic front cover font, and a moon over the 'I' again.  A banana hangs from the top edge of the page.  ("It must be the mouse", the children think when returning to the book.)  There are two distictive cameo illustrations of the gorilla on the left verso page.  They don't appear anywhere else in the book, and reinforce this gorilla's possible impishness... on rereading children will recognize the tyre from an illustration later in the book ... and where is he going I wonder?

Opening 01

This is the first spread, and we see now what a cheeky gorilla he is, reaching out and taking the zookeeper's keys.  If you look closely in the cage you'll see a toy gorilla, a book, a bike and the tyre, as well as a mouse standing on the lock, chewing at a balloon.   The zookeeper is plodding along, head down, torch shining ahead, saying goodnight.  All the verbal text appears in speech bubbles and most children recognize that they represent speech and it helps to focus their attention on the words themselves.  

Good Night Gorilla is perfect for getting children to predict.  What do you think is going to happen?   Let's turn the page and see. 

Opening 02

Oh my goodness, the gorilla's escaped, so has the balloon and the mouse, who is carrying a very heavy banana.  What's the Gorilla going to do next? 

Opening 03

He's following the zookeeper, who checks the elephant and says "Good night, Elephant". Cute looking elephant, with a nice big ball and a toy in his cage - who does the toy remind you of? That elephant is fond of peanuts too!  What do you think the gorilla is going to do?   You probably guess he's going to open the elephant's cage, and you are right.  That's just what he does!  If you go back to the previous spread you'll see that the gorilla uses a red key for his cage, which is red and he's got a pink key for the elephant's pink cage.  The elephant follows the gorilla and they open the lion's cage, the giraffe's cage, the hyena's cage and the armadillo's cage.  Each cage is a different colour with a matching key. Each aninal has something in his cage which the children will notice and comment on, as well as on each spread we see the mouse carrying the banana, and balloon floating further up into the sky.  Multiple stories being shown in the illustrations alongside a plodding verbal text comprising of "goodnight + animal"!     

And then what?  What happens to all the animals who are following the zookeeper on his rounds, led by a gorilla intent on escape? 

Opening 07

They follow the zookeeper home! Oh my goodness!  Then we have a series of wordless pages, which can prompt the children to make wild guesses.  Are they really going into his home?  No!  Turn the page, Yes!  Oh my goodness, past the hall, with pictures on the walls, pictures of the zoo animals and the zookeeper.  Pictures, which, if we peer closely, also show the zookeeper and his wife getting married, the wife holding a baby gorilla in her arms.  

They walk into the zookeeper's bedroom and settle down to sleep as the zoopkeeper settles into bed, next to his dozing wife. The wife says "Good night, dear." and turns off the light.   The following wordless spreads appear as a sequence:

Opening 10

Opening 11

Opening 12

Opening 13

Children love it!  They recognize that the speech bubbles represent each one of the animals in the bedroom, they wonder whose eyes they are, and delight in discovering they belong to a possibly irate wife. What do you think happens next?  Why, the wife takes the animals back to the zoo of course!

Opening 15

But surprise of surprises, as she walks back, saying "Good night zoo.", who's following her? The gorilla holding the keys, with his finger on his mouth looking out at the child reader pleading that they keep the secret.  And the mouse is still lugging that banana!  Can you see the moon and the balloon, now a tiny spot in the sky? 

They are next seen in the bedroom, the wife getting into bed, the gorilla and the mouse crawling into bed from the foot board.  The keys left on the floor, breaking the illustration frame.  And here is the last of the spreads ...

Opening 17

A surprising ending!  There's the gorilla asleep, "Zzzz."  The banana skin left on the bed cover. The mouse saying "Good night, Gorilla", the title of our story, and we've come full circle. 

Is this normal? we wonder, the Gorilla sleeping in the house?  If we look closely we can see a photo on the bedside table, of the zookeeper, his wife and the gorilla, posing as though a family.  The moon and the balloon can be seen through the window in the verso page.  "Again, again!" call the children, and so we begin again, and this time the children will be confirming what happens next, remembering with glee whose eyes they are, and what the wife will do.  They all chorus, "Good night, zoo", and follow with a confirmation that the Gorilla will sleep with the zookeeper and his wife all the same.   

There is so much going on in this picturebook, mini stories running parallel to the main one, and much for the children to comment on and talk about.  They will also enjoy inventing ways for "telling" the wordless pages.  It's a challenging picturebook for our ELT contexts, but well worth having a go.  

A box of tricks

Front cover 

Katie Cleminson is a fairly new author illustrator, and her first book, Box of tricks came out in 2009.   I discovered Katie's work when I visited one of my favourite blogs, Playing by the book.  Zoe, who writes this blog has interviewed Katie Cleminson, which is fun to read.   

Katie uses a pipette, (a special dropper with a squeezy rubber top that comes with nose drops or ink bottles), to get the blotchy lines to her illustrations, and the lovely blobby, colourful backgrounds.   Drawing with a pipette must be tricky, but the results are beautiful, in particular the spontaneity that is associated with having to use this kind of tool.    In Box of Tricks Katie Cleminson uses black outlines against large white spaces, and when she brings in colour it is kept to tones of blue or red.  It's a truely lovely book to look at. So let's begin...  
As ever I want to begin with the peritextual bits. The cover introduces us to our heroine and a character we will meet inside. It's a copy of one of the illustrations towards the end of the book, and children recognise this and comment on the outcome when they see the picturebook again, "That's the bear that ..." (I won't spoil the surprise!) You'll also notice that Eva is wearing a cloak here... I wonder why? 

My copy is paperback, but it contains the endpapers, musical staves with dancing rabbits.  

Front endpapers

I'm puzzled by the these rabbits, for they appear in the story, and they dance there too, but seeing them here like this is perplexing.   But don't they make good musical notes cum dancers?  And I love looking and looking again at the different poses, they really are dancing and they are so good at it!  The back endpapers are similar, but the rabbits are different and there's more of that lovely blotchy pipette splodging... it's party like. 

We are shown the box on the title page, Eva is opening it, a box which must be handled with care, for  it "contains magic"... and so our story has begun.

Title page

It's Eva's birthday and she receives a special present, a box.  She opens it and jumps in...

Opening 1

That's a very Alice in Wonderland jump!  And of course she "became a master magician. TA-DAH".  Her first trick was easy, she wished for "... a pet called Monty."

Opening 3

Wow!  That's a BIG pet! There's colour in this spread, for we are in magic-land.  But a pet wasn't enough, next Eva pulled out rabbits, lots of them and with a "flick of her wand they floated in the air." Woah! So did Monty, and all the children listening and looking go WOW! Eva is very small, down below doing her magic.  

Opening 5

But for her biggest trick she threw a party, and for that she needed food and musicians and plenty of dancing ...  It all gets magicked together, here are the musicians:

Opening 8

... I love the next spread, with the whole caboodle: musicians, rabbits, Eva and her Monty, all dancing away - that is one BIG Boogie!  We've followed the colour in a sort of crescendo getting more intense and finally WAM, here it all is, on this wordless full page spread. WONDERFUL. 

Opening 10

An apart, it reminds me of the early Paula Rego paintings, with black and white outlined creatures against coloured backgrounds, though far more light-hearted of course!  (Here's a link to one of Paula Rego's paintings for you to get the picture!)

And after all that dancing everyone is pooped!  

Opening 11

And "Eva shut her eyes, clicked her fingers ... " turn the page and see: " and everything vanished..."  Eva is sitting on the left hand page, a vaste white expanse around her, all that colourful party blodging disappeared.  

Opening 12

Actually, not everything disappeared!  That last bit of magic is falling into the box and Eva got her wish come true, a pet called Monty. 

And if you turn the page one last time, there are those dancing rabbits again, on the endpapers.  What a delightful picturebook.  Such great use of space and line, and the colourful backgrounds when Eva enjoys her magic adventure, coming together in that wordless spread and then calming again and ending quietly - you can almost hear a triangle ping, or a violin string being plucked, signally the end of the story.  Maybe that's why Katie Cleminson has used musical staves  for the endpapers, for there is an orchestral feel to the illustrations.  

It's perfect for pre-school children, and extra special because the illustrations are so different.  You'll find the children will point out all sorts of  things and you can follow it up with some pipette drawings and splodgings too.  Lots of fun!  

Recommendation 1: Colin and the wrong shadow

Happy birthday to you! 

Happy birthday to you! 

Happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday, dear blog!

Happy birthday to you!

For the next year I shall be featuring a picturebook recommendation from friends and colleagues once a month. This month's recommendation comes from fellow picturebook lover, Anneta Sadowska-Martyka, who lives and works in Poland.  Not only has she recommended a picturebook, but she's sent me some photos of children's work after sharing the story. 

Colin and the wrong shadow is by picturebook creator Leigh Hodgkinson, a wonderfully creative author illustrator, who is also a film maker.  She worked as the art director on the Charlie and Lola films, originally picturebooks by Lauren Child, before writing and illustrating her own picturebooks.  Colin and the wrong shadow is her second picturebook.  Leigh Hodgkinson is said to have been selected for the Charlie and Lola films, because she already used collage in her work. Working on Charlie and Lola must have had some form of influence, but her work is quite unique.

The pages in this picturebook are busy, packed with things to look at, things to follow and muse about.  The different fonts, some hand written, interact with the richly patterned shapes and images that have been carefully selected and placed on the pages.  It's an exciting book and Colin is a cool hero, a Siamese cat, whose life-like fur is a collage from a photo of a pet cat Hodgkinson had as a teenager. 

Let's start with the peritext, the front cover first.  We are introduced to Colin, who is looking up at the title of the book.  If you look at all the creatures and objects represented there you'll see each has their own shadow, except poor Colin whose shadow is all wrong!  

The back cover has a delicious looking cheese in the centre, with a bite taken out of it. It's a convenient background for the blurb. "Colin wakes up from his catnap to find he has the wrong shadow - someone must have switched - swapped.  He snoops and sniffs about for clues and shows a small friend that you don't have to be big to be brave."  The sign in the cheese says "Very yummy indeed" alongside the ISBN and bar code! His small friend, a lacey pink mouse, is peeking up from behind a cracker.  

I have the paperback edition, and there are no endpapers, instead there's a neat half title page, with a form for the reader to complete according to what kind of shadow they have.   Then the copyright and title pages, each with a mixture of handwritten and typed fonts, mix with crackers and cheese, buttons and sequins, ripped notebooks and naive-like drawings of flowers and mini-beasts.  And of course there are subtle shadows made by a shining yellow sun.  A taste of what's to come. Take a look at that dedication too, it's very special. 

Colin has been dreaming. There are three Cheerios connecting him to his dream, a delicious one where he was "... swimming in a gigantic bowl of creamy milk." But he wakes up feeling funny, "... not funny ha ha but funny peculiar." 

"... for some reason he appears to have the wrong shadow!"  But he tries not to let this spoil a pleasant afternoon.  

In this comic book-like spread, we can see he has a tough time.  He is sniggered at, squeaked at and ignored.  Poor Colin. Look at the different textures Hodgkinson has used to create this spread: Flossy Fluffball, in the middle frame, really is fluffy even! It's a busy spread.  

Hodgkinson moves between double spreads, (using both left and right pages to create a whole image),  to separate facing page frames throughout the book. This verso frame is a wonderful sequence of poor Colin thinking he's turning into a mouse.  Pieces of cloth make for the different beackgrounds in this illustration. He's beginning to wonder whether he really is a mouse, especially as "... he does like the odd nibble of cheese ..."  The yellow base is actually a piece of cheese. But "... No, Colin is definitely 100% CAT", and we see him peer at a shiny watering-can to check! Poor Colin is miserable, it might be Ok if he had an elephant's shadow, but he doesn't.  Then he notices his shadow and follows it through more richly decorated pages, with wiggly sewn stitches weaving their way across the page and suddenly Colin realises... 

... the lacy pink mouse! Vernon has his shadow.   Vernon explains how it all happened and how wonderful it was having such an important "Superstar" shadow.  The illustration shows us that Vernon is a winner, now his shadow is big and powerful!

Colin wants his shadow back and Vernon makes a run for it, into his mouse hole, which by the way he had recently decorated.  

But "Uh-oh! Colin's shadow is too BIG to fit through the door."  I like the way Hodgkinson has used the two pages to represent the inside and outside of Vernon's home, which is lusciously warm in those oranges and yellows.  He's pulling with all his might, but that shadow won't fit.  Look at Vernon's furniture:  a cracker chair next to a cheese table. 

Vernon gives up.  He sits in his mouse hole door and laments: "YOU see it's JUST not EASY being a tiny pink mouse all of the time. And having Colin's marvelous shadow meant everybody took Vernon seriously for a change."   Colin knew just what it felt like to be "... sniggered at, squeaked at and ignored ...", so he suggests they forget worrying about their shadows and "... concentrate on more important things -  like having fun together." 

And so they sort out the shadows.  

Hodgkinson's illustrations here are fabulous, you can feel the shadow being pulled and stretched and that ping is just perfectly pingy. 

And they have some fun together ... Vernon is happy as he has his light mouse shadow and Colin to play with and he really feels like a superstar now. They play, have a cup of tea in mouse-sized teacups, then it's time for another nap and some cheerio dreams.  Each animal comfy with his own shadow. 

Turn the page to see what the dream is... (notice the Cheerios connecting up the two images!)

We've come full circle, and we're back in that bowl of creamy milk, but this time Colin has his friend with him ... "Slurp" and their two shadows are watching the action from the rim of the bowl.  It's so much better being friends with someone and having fun than worrying about being big and tough, don't you think?  

Anneta began this picturebook by talking about shadows, when shadows appeared, long shadows, short shadows etc. She was delighted that they remembered the The Gruffalo's child during this activity.   To follow up this beautifully illustrated picturebook she asked her students to invent some silly shadows for things, based on the form on the half title page, and they had fun making sentences using their silly ideas.  Then they wrote a short story using a storyboard template and illustrated it.  Here's an quick photo of the story of a fox whose wrong shadow was a carrot!

What's missing is how old Anneta's children are ... she forgot to mention that, but they are no older than ten as this is the limit of the age group she works with.  A BIG thank you to Anneta for introducing me to Leigh Hodgkinson, I'm a fan!  And a BIG thank you for sharing. 

A final comment: if you go to Leigh Hodgkinson's website at Wonky Button  and and click on  Crafty bits, there are some great downloads, which provide excellent follow up activities to her books.  The cut out of Colin and Vernon can be used to make long and short shadows for example. 

War and peace with elephants

Tusk Tusk by David McKee continues this month's posts related to peace.   McKee is probably most known within ELT for his Elmer books.  But he's also the creator of the  Mr Benn books and films, very much part of my childhood memories. Mr Benn is a very ordinary looking banker, who wears a bowler hat,  but he has splendid adventures when he puts on different dressing up clothes, from a very special costume shop. The films were made in the 70's and I have discovered are now available on YouTube.  A truely brilliant discovery, I shall be watching them all over the next couple of weeks.  The music gives me those shivers associated with long ago memories.  Amazing!  Here's the link to Mr Benn, The Red Knight, the very first episode of the series ...  14 minutes of memory lane. 

McKee began writing and illustrating books in the 60's,  when picturebooks really began to take shape and become as we know them today.  His contemporaries are picturebook creators like John Burningham, Maurice Sendak, Eric Carle, Pat Hutchins and Raymond Briggs.  

Tusk Tusk was written in 1978 and is about black and white elephants who love everything except each other. Look at the cover, those two elephants, ready for a duel, separted by a tree, the home to birds. Keep your eye on these birds as you look at the book, for the way they react to all the elephants do is entertaining!

How about the peritext?  There's a great copyright page, with a cameo illustration of two fighting elephants and the ironic caption "Vive la différence!"  The visual clues tipping us off to the violent content continue with the title page - a fluffy, feathery tree separting two very angry elephants, tusks touching. 

As you look at some of the pictuebook pages, notice McKee's use of symmetry in the illustrations, the elephants are the same in every way, like mirrors of each other, just different colours.  

"Once all the elphants in the world were black or white.  They loved all creatures"

Don't they look happy and relaxed?  At one with nature and those bird friends they each have, and the trees are soft and feather-like, the left one even has green shoots.  Harmony and peace. 

"... but they hated each other."

Yikes, not only are the elephants looking mean, with trunks like fists, but the trees do too.  The leaves are spikey, they look as though they are swaying in the heated atmosphere.  The background wash is a pinky red, the colour of danger.  The next spread,  "... and each kept to his own side of the jungle." is shown by a powerful image of trees looking like walls, the elephants on either side.  They are lined up, like an army preparing for battle.    Can you guess what will happen next? 

... of course!  War is declared and the elephants huddle together, fists raised and glaring, black at white, white at black. The birds in the trees are flying off, beaks downturned, worried.   

Peace loving elephants, (for there were some) ran into the jungle, a deep dark jungle - so deep and dark (a maze of a place in fact) and they were never seen again.  And so the battle began.  It went on ...  and on. 

These missile-like trees are excellent hiding places for the elephants whose fist-like trunks have become powerful firearms.  And, as with many terrible wars, it didn't stop until all the elephants were dead. 

Piles of black and white elephants, brought together in death, lying against feather-like palm trees, trees we associate with peace and tranquility.  And what happened next?

Grandchildren of the peace-loving elephants came out of the jungle, and guess what, they were grey (I always wondered why elephants were grey!).  They are shown leaping, trunks waving, happy and playful.  The birds are back too, they're a little perplexed possibly, but happy to see their friends the elephants again. 

"... and since then elephants have lived in peace."

Cool illustration, a calm blue background,  just the one tree, a peaceful green, with a canopy of foliage that covers all elephants, no matter what.  They are calm and relaxed too, playing with each other and their friends the birds.  Look at their trunk-like trunks, no fists or firearm images.  A happy ending? 

"But recently the little ears and the big ears have been giving each other strange looks." 

And look at those birds, they look very annoyed.  Not good.  If you go back to the cool blue illustration you'll see big ears and small ears are on both sides of the tree together, but here they are separate, their trunks are now like hands, pointing or hiding whispered gossip. The trees are different again, each leaning away from the centrefold. 

Oh dear, not a happy ending, but we are left wondering, as the very last page has a cameo illustration ...

What do you think?  Was there another war?  

It's a deceptively simple picturebook, bringing violence and peace together on a page, an excellent title for children in upper primary and lower secondary providing space for discussion around such themes as racism, prejudice and tolerance.  TeachEnglish has a set of lesson plans for this very purpose, which can be downloaded here.  And a very readable article by Janet Evans can be downlaoded from my website, scroll down and click on "War and conflict: books can help." Finally I discovered a link to a useful set of guidelines for using Tusk Tusk for Philosophical discussion.

To finish, here's a short film of David McKee talking about his childhood and his first pictures.   

Turns out he loves Paul Klee, one of my favourite artists... Castle and sun must have  influenced Elmer!