What does Polly Wally like to eat?

Time for tea Polly Wally is a fun picturebook by Kali Stileman.  It's wacky and silly and perfect for 4 and 5 year olds. Stileman uses a sort of collage technique, cut shapes and scribbles to create lots of textures, in particular Polly Wally herself (himself?) who is a very busy blob of paint strokes.  Polly Wally is a bird, can you see the yellow beak and skinny legs?  What do you think she likes for tea? She's peering at a line of busy ants marching across the bottom of the cover...

The half title page shows a row of coloured birds on the grass, the title a contrasting grey above them.

Half title page

There's also a clue here about Polly Wally's tea, can you guess what it is? A nice bright pair of endpapers greet us as we open the book further ...

Endpapers

Stileman is a designer and these look a little like her wrapping paper designs! The copyright and title pages give us a couple more clues about Polly Wally's tea...

Copyright and title page

Opening 1

Sure enough as soon as we turn the page again we see Polly Wally with her knees knocking, she really is hungry.  Super large font to emphasize just how hungry Polly Wally really is.  Those front cover ants have managed to climb the tree and there's that butterfly again, and the seven-eyed spider we've seen a couple of times already (keep up!)

Opening 2

Ohh goodness, that's Jemima Giraffe!  Jemima likes "luscious lip-smacking leaves ... try some."  Umm, what do you think?  Will Polly Wally like the leaves? (NB the stick insect at Polly Wally's feet).

Opening 3

"Yum!" said the giraffe. "Yuck!" said Polly Wally!  Nope that's not what she likes to eat for tea. Look at her eyes!   Our story is set up, children know that whatever comes next will proceed in a similar fashion.  Polly Wally will try to eat the offered food and won't like it! There's lots of repetition... "I'm hungry" ... "I eat ..." "Try some." Yum!" said ... "Yuck!" said Polly Wally!  That's good as children get to grips quickly with those chunks of language and love helping tell the story with you.  The repetitive format of exclaiming hunger, being offered food and not liking it is also supportive and children can confidently guess what will happen next.
So, Polly Wally meets Xanthe Zebra, who likes sweet green grass, Eleanor elephant who eats lots of fabulous fruit, Colin crocodile who just agrees that he's hungry too... oops, fly off Polly Wally! Finally, Mavis monkey who eats nobbly nuts.  
But, it's not as simple as that because on each spread children notice the mini beasts scattered around, a worm in the grass, a stripy caterpillar ...

Opening 7

Can you see him on the verso page?  On other spreads there's a fat beetle climbing a tree and that seven-eyed spider hangs alongside Mavis Monkey.  And Polly Wally is almost always being watched from a not too far distance by a pert little red bird...

Opening 10

Can you see her in the verso page? When we turn to opening 11 we realise it must be Polly Wally's mummy, who's "come home with ..."

Opening 11

Close up of recto page

If we pull the flaps we'll see she's been cleverly collecting all those beasties for Polly Wally's tea.  "A wiggly worm, a tickly stick insect, a big shiny black spider, a speedy spider,a nd a creepy crawling caterpillar."  

Opening 12

It's our turn to go "Yuck!" now!  YUCK! How could you Polly Wally? It's good hearing/seeing the children making the connection between all the different insects when they see them under the leaves, and of course upon returning to the picturebook they are careful to look for the different creepy crawly beasties, knowing they will turn up on the penultimate spread.  And of course we can have a nice discussion about what we like eating for tea.  
An extra is that this particular edition, a paperback one, has lovely thick pages, so it's nice and robust and will take quite a lot of battering in the library!  
I'd like to thank Random House for sending me a copy of Time for Tea Polly Wally - greatly appreciated and well used already!

The book of phobias

Front cover

Little Mouse's Big book of fears is actually by Emily Gravett, even though Little Mouse really has contributed to its brilliance - he's a sort of Emily Gravett avatar!  It's gobsmackingly wonderful and until recently I wasn't quite sure how it could fit into the world of ELT.  How short-sighted of me.  

I remember when I read an interview in the Guardian, cut out and sent to me by my father who knew I'd have missed it otherwise.  There the journalist takes great pleasure in highlighting how Gravett used her daughter's mice to create many of the nibbled and stained pages of this picturebook.  We are looking at real mouse pee, real mouse nibbles as well as a load of very clever collage and skillful sketching in all sorts of mediums, all captured by today's advanced printing technologies!  It's not surprising it won the Nestlé Children's Book Prize when it first came out in 2007. 

The front cover has a whopping great nibbled hole in it, Little Mouse at his best.  Emily Gravett's name has been roughly crossed out and replaced with "Little Mouse's", whose fright-filled face can be seen through the nibbled hole.  The ledger-like note book has a second hand, stained, battered and well used look and feel to it, the inside spreads are that dark yellowy brown that comes to books that have been on shelves for a while.

Front endpapers

The endpapers are covered in hieroglific-like characters, we aren't really sure what they are at this point, but upon returning to them it's clear they are the visual representations of many of the phobias mentioned in the book. But the front endpapers contain other important information too: we are introduced to our front cover graffiti artist, lugging the pencil that did the dead.  He's looking up at a clipped cutting (or nibbling): the challenge that leads this story. In short this is a self-help book, where the reader is asked to fill every "large, blank, space" with a combination of drawing, writing and collage. "Remember a fear faced is a fear defeated."

Close-up of front endpaper

The title page continues with the same graffiti and nibbling stunt and we are into the ledger. From the title page we see Little Mouse's face and he's clutching the pencil, when we turn the page we realise he's been wrapped in a spider's web.  

Opening 1

But as our eyes scan the illustration, we see the die hole nibble in verso opens up onto a spider which was on the copyright page, and the handwritten "I'm scared of creepy crawlies (especially spiders!)". That's when we notice the top of each page of the spread, verso indicates "Arachnophobia (Fear of spiders)" and recto "Entomophobia (Fear of insects)", each with the request to, "Use the space below to record your fears." We take all this in and begin piecing together the information we are shown and told, but we are only beginning, for each spread challenges us in different ways to find the pieces. Nevertheless, it begins the visual verbal structure we encounter throughout the picturebook. 

As we turn the pages, Little Mouse faces each fear, he doesn't look very confident and the pencil he drags along with him gets sharpened one end and nibbled the other, shavings and nibbles are scattered everywhere, as it gets shorter! Little Mouse faces "Teratophia (Fear of monsters)" and "Clinophobia (Fear of going to bed)", connected across the spread by a large bed with many pairs of eyes peering from the under-the-bed- darkness.

Opening 3

On opening 3 Little Mouse faces his fear of knives, "Aichmophobia", holding his tail tightly between his legs he peers up at a sweet get well card (showing a chubby mouse with his tail bandaged up), a poster for The Amazing Flying Mousecrobats, three blind circus mice who use "their tails and sense of smell to guide them", and a photo of three white mice in dark glasses, with their tails cut. This collection of memorabilia is aced by the life-like "The Farmer's Friend" newspaper cutting on the recto ...

Close up of opening 3

Dozens of plays on words: the children's nursery rhyme, Three Blind Mice,  is retold in an article about Mrs Sabatier from Deep Cut Farm, who managed to rid herself of "a trio of cheese-mad rodents". There's a photo of her triumphantly holding the three tails above an advert for The Amazing Flying Mousecrobats Circus cancelled "due to unforeseen circumstances". The fold over flap is an advert for "Three fab knives".  

If left open the flap (an array of adverts about bathrooms and plumbing) contributes to the visual verbal play on the next spread, where Little Mouse faces "Ablutophobia (Fear of bathing)" and "Hydrophobia (Fear of water)". Then onto "Dystychiphobia (Fear of accidents)" and "Rupophobia (Fear of dirt)".  The toilet theme continues though this time in relation to having accidents! Appropriately stuck onto the page with plasters, the toilet advert has tiny sketches of how a tiny mouse can actually reach the loo seat ... too late though, Little Mouse has already had an accident, and embarrassed he is about it too!

Opening 6

There are more intertextual references as poor Little Mouse faces his next fears: Ligyrophobia (Fear of loud noises) and Chronomrntrophobia (Fear of clocks).  Brilliantly shown with a reference to the traditional nursery rhyme Hickory, Dickory, Dock, poor mouse is ricocheted across the shuddering face of a paper clock, with the tall grandfather at 1 o'clock and the sheet music (rewritten by Emily Gravett) nibbled, torn and covered in mouse prints,  in the background.  That pencil is getting a good deal shorter!

"Isolophobia (Fear of solitude)" shows Little Mouse quite alone on the verso looking fearfully at the black recto page.  But, Gravett's tour de force is the following spread, Opening 8:

Opening 8

Here we are presented with "WhereamIophobia (Fear of getting lost)" ... no it's not a real phobia, but made up by Emily Gravett! and "Acrophobia (Fear of heights)".  The spread doesn't look that amazing really, but the map of "Isle of Fright" is an incredible piece of illustration, unfolding to show us the island in detail.  You can what shape the island is  from the cover and some of the places of interest include an owlery, a cat on a fence, Deep Cut Farm, and giant spiders' webs.  These are references to phobias encountered in the picturebook.

Close up of opening 8 with opened map

Once opened up, the map is pure delight and covered in hilarious places and references to Little Mouse's fears.  The village at the south end of the island is called "Loose Bottom", there's a straight of water called "Farmer's Cut" which separates the mainland from "Tail End", at "Sharp Point".  The island to the south is calls "Oops"!  These are just a few of the fun names and descriptions to be found, often referring back to previous spreads and fears. The key, shows us that the colours represent a continuum from green (edgy) to red (petrified!); the scale is shown in "500 mouse bpm to 70 human bpm" - brilliant!  And that's not all, the back of the map, which may go unnoticed,  has little notes and sketches giving us directions to Wide Eye Lake (I think!).  

You'd think that was it, but no!  There are still more fears. "Ornithophobia (Fear of birds)" and "Phagophoboa (Fear of being eaten)", where Little mouse is chased by real feathers (with eyes and teeth) and a very scary looking owl. Then onto "Cynophobia (Fear of dogs)" and "Ailurophobia (Fear of cats)".  Here Little Mouse has sketched and collaged a dog, next to the words "I get nervous near dogs", but if we focus we see that the dog is made up of all sorts of photos and cuttings of cats, and a fold back postcard of a dog tells us that in fact Little Mouse is ... 

Close up of opening 10 with flap

"... PETRIFIED of CATS!" Poor Little Mouse is really in a bad way.  The penultimate spread shows him cowering , afraid of his own shadow, "Panophobia (Fear of everything)" and "Sciaphobia (fear of shadows)" And the words tell us, "I'm afraid of nearly everything I see. But even though I'm very small ..."

Opening 12

Ahhh, after all that facing of fears it is good to know that there are those out there that suffer from "Musophobia (Fear of mice)"! Look at Little Mouse's posture, and smiley face, he's got through the book and is feeling tall.  He hugs his pencil stub, which has faithfully served him as he did just as Emily Gravett suggested on the front endpapers. 

And the back endpapers? True to form, Gravett has used them to give us the ending:

Back endpapers

A contented Little Mouse, hugging his pencil, covered in bits of paper with references to the fears he has overcome, birds' feathers, receipts, bits from the collection of collages he used and drawings of Little Mouse being brave (frightening a spider; pointing a sword at a cat etc). And there's a dedication, two in fact: the picturebook is dedicated to anyone who is has musophobia but that's crossed out and replaced by a dedication to "The fabulous rats Button and Mr Moo who taught me everything I know about nibbling." 

Back cover

The back cover shows Little Mouse, now free of his pencil, grasping at the book shop receipt, which tells us the condition the book is in: Used: "Poor, scribbled in, rodent damage". Look closely and you will see what time the book was bought, "Stroke of one" and it was paid for by "MOUSTRO UK". 

Woah!  What a brilliant picturebook!  

Lots of possibilities for slightly older children who will enjoy the madness of the layout and find the phobias fascinating.  They could make their own collage of something they are afraid of by following the instructions in an activity sheet, or an arachnophobia door hanger.  

Older students might enjoy discussing some of the phobias, making up a phobia like the Whereamiophobia and describing the symptoms. Write a short dialogue between Little Mouse and a journalist about one of the phobias, using the illustrations as a prompt. Enjoy the detailed illustrations, in particular the map of the Isle of Fright.  Could the students create a map of an Island based on the one in the picturebook and have fun giving directions. 

Look at some of the phobias carefully. How much Greek or Latin do we know?

Ablutophobia – Latin ablutere = to wash off

Ailurophobia – Greek αἴλουρος (aílouros)= cat

Chronophobia – Greek xρόνος(choronos) = time

Hydrophobia – Greek ὕδωρ(hudōr) = water

Musophobia – Latin mus = mouse

Finally for much older students include this picturebook when discussing phobias and fears and use a series of question prompts from ESL Discussions. 

How TERRIBLY short-sighted it was of me to not think this picturebook could be used in an ELT classroom. 

There was an old lady

A favourite traditional song, known and loved by most English speakers is I know an old woman who swallowed a fly.  It's said to have an unknown author, but Copyright has been given to  Alan Mills and Rose Bonne (1952). Children love anything that makes the impossible possible, and this traditional song does just that! An old lady swallows a fly, a spider, a bird, a cat, a dog, a cow and finally a horse!  

The picturebook I'm featuring today is the award winning version of this song by Simms Taback, There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

Dust jacket front cover

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

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

Front cover

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

Spine

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

Front endpapers

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

Copyright and title page

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

So let's get going with the song!

Opening 1

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

Turn the page and ...

Opening 2

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

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

Opening 3

Opening 4

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

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

Opening 5

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

Opening 11

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

Opening 12

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

We know how the story ends don't we? 

Opening 14

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

Back verso

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

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

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

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

Old MacDonald with a twist

Front cover

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

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

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

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

Title page

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

Opening 1

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

Opening 1 + flap

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

Opening 2

And the song continues! 

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

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

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

Opening 4

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

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

Opening 7 + flap

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

Opening 8

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

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

Opening 9 + flap

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

Opening 10

"Beep!" Of course! 

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

Opening 11

"EIEI ... " what's under the flap? 

Opening 11 + flap

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

Print-salience 

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