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!

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.