Recommendation 3: On the road with Mavis and Marge

Front cover 

Niamh Sharkey  is an Irish author illustrator, and her award winning picturebook, On the road with Mavis and Marge,  has been recommended by Ana Rasteiro, a primary English teacher who works with me here in Portugal. 

I am familiar with one or two of Niamh Sharkey's picturebooks - I've got  I'm a happy Hugglewug, and The Gigantic Turnip.  The latter has been recommended by another colleague in Spain, so I'll write about it another day!  Her illustrations are fun and colourful, but change quite a bit between picturebooks, the three titles I've mentioned here are all different.   On the road ... mixes occasional collage with an illustrative style you might associate with cool sets of coffee mugs - I think the illustrations were originally painted with oil, at least in an interview Sharkey says that's her favourite medium. She's also an admirer of Tove Jansson's The Moomins . 

Thelma & Louise 1991

But let's get back to On the road ... Mavis is a cow and Marge is a chicken, and together they go where no animal has gone before!  They have great adventures, but eventually decide that home is the place to be.  On the front cover Marge the chicken reminds me of Louise, in the film Thelma and Louise  with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis - those sun glasses and her polka dot head scarf are almost the same! 

As usual I've got the paperback edition, and there are no endpapers as such, though the inside of the front and back cover is red with little white dots, just like Marge's headscarf on the front cover.  

Copyright and title page

On the copyright and title pages the mass of writing drew my attention to the font, called Kingthings Trypwriter. As we go through the picturebook its quirky hand typed letters mix nicely with some hand-written font.  You'll notice that the lower case f, i, and n have little shadows. Fun illustrations on the copyright page too... And once again we see Mavis and Marge, no ordinary cow and chicken for they have handbags and books under their arms. 

Opening 1

The first opening introduces our characters:  Mavis is shown in the verso illustration, looking eagerly out at the world, Marge is busy reading a book.  The words on the recto tell us that Mavis is "different to other cows" and that Marge is "smarter than your average chicken", if you go back to the verso illustration, you'll see the other cows and the average chicken in the back ground!  Great image of Mavis and Marge on the collage mountain top. 

Opening 2

The second spread uses multiple cartoon-like frames, giving us a sequence of events to see and read about.  "They knew there was a world out there waiting to be explored" say the words, and the picture shows us that Marge has discovered this in her book.  So they take the bike from the barn and off they go! The next spread is a wonderful double page illustration, of the two friends on their adventure.  Marge is giving directions!

Opening 3

Can you guess what happens? In comic strip fashion we are taken through the sequence of events that leads them to their encounter with Clarence, a friendly rabbit, "out for a spin in his car."

Opening 4

Off they go with Clarence, and we see another double spread of the three of them tootling along happily. Then another spread with separate shots of the different places they visit, going "uphill ... downhill... through puddles ... over bridges ... through the forest ... all the way to the ocean."  My favourite is this little cameo, using a map of somewhere in Ireland (yep, I checked the name, it's from County Antrim, N. Ireland) 

Close up from opening 6

And so they arrive at the ocean and crash, they hit a bollard, but "What luck!  They landed in Benny's boat!"   "Welcome aboard!" say's Benny!  And off they go … in a tiny yellow boat.  Mavis is green, but Marge has great sea legs! Where are they going can you see? 

Opening 8

The South Pole of course! Home of penguins and in particular Albert, who's an adventurous penguin about to fly to the moon!  "Ready? Stead?  Blast off!" Mavis and Marge, Clarence, Benny and Albert arrive on the moon, where they bounce around with green faced aliens, and all's well, until ... 

Opening 12

They look to into space and see planet Earth, blue and green in all its glory.  "I want to go …" "HOME!" say Mavis and Marge. "Hmmmm?" says the alien, what is this thing called home? And so they all went home, from the moon  back to earth and Mavis and Marge say "Goodbye" to their new friends and cycle back to the farm. 

Opening 14

And what a welcome they get!  Mavis and Marge both agree that "Home!" "It is the best place to be!"  If you look at Opening 1 again you'll see that the farm is called "Home Farm"! But that's not the end, turn the page and you'll see they have a visitor!  He's come to find out what "Home" is!

Back verso

Ana discovered this picturebook at a book fair in Lisbon.  She was playing with transport words with a group of pre-school children and it was the theme that caught her attention, as well as the fun illustrations and the fantasy storyline.  She didn't do anything special with the picturebook, she just read it to the children several times.  But that is special, and very often overlooked!  Children need to be read to for the sake of being read to, forget the linguistic focus or pre- during- and after- storytelling activities! Just enjoy the sharing of a picturebook together. She described the children's responses as they saw the different types of transport and they were able to call out the names in English.  They loved the bizarre occurrences and the trip to the moon, and of course they all empathized with Mavis and Marge when they realised that home was the best place to be. And as I've mentioned in previous posts, the children recognized the speech bubbles as visual representations of the spoken word and wanted them to be read.  And they all enjoyed saying "Hello" with the alien at the end!  

Thanks to Ana for recommending such a fun book, loved it! And don't think it's just for pre-school, primary aged children learning English as a foreign language, up till about 8 years old, would enjoy this picturebook I think, and if you go to this link, you can download some fun activities: cut out and colour Mavis and Marge, write a postcard, complete an alien, colour a space rocket. 

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.