Stuck and completely over the top

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...

Copyright and Opening 1

... 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

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, they tell us his point of view. The pictures show us the disastrous results, they show us the owner's point of view. 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 (Spike).  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 eyes.  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?).  The words tell the dog's story and the pictures the owner's story - the irony comes from bringing them together - this is what I call a 1+1=3 picturebook!

On the first sharing of the book learners will be chorusing "Noooo!" in no time (no pun intended) and will want to share their own experiences and pet dog stories. Do lead them to the discovery that there are two different stories told by the words and shown in the pictures. Why not encourage them to write and illustrate some of their own pet stories and put them together in a class book ... can they show and tell two stories too?

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

Marvin wanted more

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

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.

Copyright page and 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

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.