Recommendation nº 7: Five Little Fiends

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 of community cohesion.  This educates children to live with diversity and shows them how different communities can be united by common experiences and values.  It takes children from the familiar to the unfamiliar so they can see themselves 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. 

I love my white shoes

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.  

A feisty princess!

Front cover

If you are looking for a pink princess story, the kind where prince meets princess and they live happily ever after, then look elsewhere!  Princess Smartypants by Babette Cole is quite different, she's a feisty little miss, who wants to do stuff her way and really couldn't be bothered with princes!

It's a great little picturebook, and thoroughly funny, even if you're a boy!  But what makes this particular picturebook so special is the way the pictures and words together create the humour and irony, which the words alone just can't reach.  You really do have to take in the words and the pictures, rather like Rosie's Walk, it's a 1+1=3 picturebook!

The peritextual features do well at preparing us for our spirited princess.  On the front cover she is shown riding a motorbike, in her leather bike gear, a dino on her back seat. Can you see the number plate?  HRHSP - Her royal Highness Smarty Pants - do help your students with this joke!  

Page 1

Upon opening the book, there's a great family crest on page 1, with more of those dinos and a big fat frog.  "Smartypantus rulus O.K.us" is the family moto!   

Title page and copyright

The title page shows our princess marching steadfastly into the book, leading a mummy dino and four babies, pets maybe?

Princess Smartypants is a typical 32 page picturebook, made up of the occasional double spread but mostly verso and recto illustrations.  There's no rhythm or pattern to how they appear, but there is a definite pattern to how the words tell us one thing and the pictures show us something quite different, at times expanding on the words, other times actually giving different bits of information.

Opening 1

The verso here tells us that "Princess Smartypants did not want to get married. She enjoyed being a Ms. " the pictures show us what fun she has being a Ms!  Lying on the floor, watching horse-riding programmes, surrounded by her pets and recently discarded litter.  And in recto just look at those boggled eyes princes, all captivated by her golden locks and painted nails!  

Opening 2

But all Princess Smartypants wants to do is "live in her castle and do exactly as she pleases."  And of course the pictures so us what this entails!

The problem starts when the Queen says she has to sort herself out and get a husband.  Poor King looks quite battered at the Queen's side - I'd guess he probably wishes his daughter would stay as she was! However this doesn't stop the constant stream of princes, which continue the story.

From here on princess Smartypants gives each prince a task, which often relates to his name - weird and wonderful names, which will mostly likely be lost on your students, so do explain them! On each page or spread the words tell us what the task is and the pictures show us how each prince failed. This is how the ironic humour works at its best.

Opening 4

"She asked Prince Compost to stop the slugs eating her garden."  And poor Prince Compost is shown being frightened by the giant slugs! And so it continues with Prince Rushforth and Prince Pelvis; Prince Boneshaker and Prince Vertigo - poor chap is asked to climb a tower! Prince Bashthumb doesn’t manage to collect firewood, and Prince fetlock is kicked out of the picture, literally! Great use of frame breaking in the verso illustration below. 

Opening 8

And Prince Grovel is just hilarious going shopping with a very large Queen! Last comes Prince Swimbladder and he too fails his task.

But wait! What about Prince Swashbuckle?  A dashing young prince, who manages to successfully complete each of the tasks.  

Opening 11

Once again the words remind us of the what  had to be done and the pictures show us how Prince Swashbuckle creatively managed to do it. And here he is: a very clever prince, waiting smugly for Princess Smartypants to kiss him on the cheek.  

Opening 13

But look at those ellipses: 

Opening 14

Ha, ha, ha! Princess Smartypants turns him into a frog, and she lives happily ever after, no longer bothered by princes, who are frightened of her now!

Gail Ellis and Jean Brewster included this picturebook in their well-known resource book, Tell it again! The new storytelling handbook for primary teachers.  But sadly they make no mention in the introduction of the clever use of illustrations to create the humour that makes this book so special.  Instead there is a focus on the words, with lots of activities to expand on what a typical prince and princess are like or to match what the different princes are asked to do. There is an activity, which uses a substitution table to help children describe why the princes couldn't complete their tasks, and another which helps students describe how creative Prince Swashbuckle was, all information they can only get from looking at the illustrations, so that's good!

I'd also suggest that children be told that the words and pictures give different bits of information, and that when they are seen together they are much funnier.    I'd help the children look for how the pictures contradict the words. Upon re-reading children don't need to be told again, they will have understood, and will talk and comment about the humour they can create by making 1+1=3!

Another focus Ellis and Brewster give to their activity set is related to gender stereotypes, and this is an important aspect of books like Princess Smartypants, but isn't she being a little mean and hard hearted?  Poor Prince Swashbuckle, he did so well to complete all the tasks, wasn't she rather rude to turn him into a frog?  This could be quite a good discussion, and boys in particular may feel rather trodden on after seeing what happens to all the princes, so give them a chance to voice their concerns! 

Finally there's a great film on YouTube of Babette Cole reading Princess Smartypants.  A lovely way to engage the children if you have a class set of books, so they can look at the picturebook and listen to Ms Cole as she happily reads the story!

A fishy exuberance

Front cover

Hooray for Fish!  is nothing  but exuberant!   Written and illustrated by Lucy Cousins, the creator of Maisy Mouse, it is such a fun picturebook, with wonderfully bright illustrations and in her well known gouache style, of large blocks of colour outlined in black.  Cousins also does all the characteristic lettering by hand.  

The edition I have comes with a DVD read by Emilia Fox.  It's a nice addition to the picturebook, but certainly couldn't replace it. I love anything with fish in it, so I'm biased, but this is one of my favourites. 

Blue is predominant - it's an underwater setting after all!  But the blues are different in hue, some are baby blue others are more turquoise, and some pages are almost green.  It's nice to just flick through and see all the different shades. 

It's a concept book in rhyme, using colours and adjectives and some opposites, so for ELT that's a good reason to use it!  But to be honest share this one for the visually exciting experience it gives your young students, together with the lovely rhythmic text.  It's truely brilliant. 

Let's take a look at all the different bits.  Front and back cover are one big illustration, showing us a big spotty fish, in orange and yellow with stripy fins and tail.  Big fish is smiling at a little fish, who's just the same.  The blurb on the back reads: "Splosh, splash, splish! Hooray for fish! Swim with Little Fish and all his fishy friends in this splishy-spalshy riot of colour and rhyme under the sea." Let's go swimming then ...

Front endpapers

Splash... into the underworld.  The front endpapers show us the world Little Fish lives in, there's that baby blue and some very interesting sea plants and corals. Lovely.  No fish though. 

Title page and copyright

And here's Little Fish looking very tiny alongside the wavey plant.  He's turned to the right, the direction in which we have to turn the page to meet all his fishy friends. 

Opening 1

I love those sea plants, wavy and stripy and so colourful.  What a wonderful world Little Fish lives in. Let's meet some of his friends. 

Opening 2

Here are some of his colourful, funny friends.  Little Fish's world is full of diversity.  There are spotty fish and stripy fish, happy fish and grumpy fish, all clearly exactly that - the grumpy fish not only has a turned down mouth but he's brown and black, weighted down with a heavy head and small fins, nothing jovial about him at all.  Grumpy has become gripy in the US edition. 

Opening 5

Here's a nice page with the numbers decorating each fish, as though they have different scales.  Upon turning the page, the simplicity of three white fish is contrasted with a page full of multicoloured ones and enables small children to have fun with their counting, as well as discover some funny fish. Can you see two fruity fish?  

Opening 6

From here on Little Fish's world is ever more creative.  An ele-fish, a big grey fish with a trunk, a shelly fish, a sort of squid in a shell, Hairy fish and scary fish, and then ...

Opening 9

... these lovely rhyming fish!  No mistaking what these fish are!  On we swim, past fat fish and thin fish, twin fin-fin fish, two wonderfully colourful fish with large peacock-like fins and tails. "Curly whirly, twisty twirly ... "

Opening 13

"So many friends, so many fish, splosh, splash, splish!"  Leaf fish, horse fish, fishes with hearts and stars and peacock tails.  Long thin ones, spiky ones, flat ray like ones and sea plants with red heart shaped leaves... 

And then, little fish is suddenly all alone.  "Where's the one I love the best, even more than all the rest?" 

Opening 16

Here she is!  It's Mummy Fish! "Kiss, kiss, kiss, hooray for fish!"  And if we turn the page one more time, the back endpapers remind us just how exuberant this lovely book is!

Back endpapers

All the fish that Little Fish encountered are here on the back endpapers.  There's the ele-fish, and the twin fin-fin fish, the grumpy fish and the hairy fish.  All together with Little Fish and Mummy Fish.  It's really is a Hooray for Fish book!

Now how cool was that?  Children love it, and want it again and again.  They pick up the rhyming words really easily and  chant along with you as you share it with them.  And if you want you can do all sorts of fun arty activities related to fish.  Fishy underworld scenes, inventing wild and wonderful fish, making a daddy fish for Little Fish, and maybe even some brothers and sisters!  

There's a very complete set of activities on the Walker Books page which can be downloaded here and adapted for varied ELT contexts. 

If you haven't got the the DVD you can use the YouTube version of the film, and you and your children can tell the story when the music stops! The music is fun and calypso-like and accompanies Little Fish on his encounters with his fishy friends - trumpets sound when he meets the ele-fish and the music becomes slow and sad when he meets the grumpy fish.  

If you like Lucy Cousins you may also like an earlier post about the picturebook I'm the best.

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.