Tag fairy tales

Mummy! / First Words & 123

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Mummy!
Lerryn Korda
Nosy Crow
What a cool idea: a lift-the-flap board book with an ancient Egyptian setting published in association with The British Museum.
A small girl has been separated from her mummy and is searching for her: “Where’s my mummy?” she asks repeatedly as she looks in various likely locations: the market, the lotus pool,

by the enormous sphinx, among the foliage by the river and in the temple.
Finally, she reaches her own home and …

With nine visual references to artefacts belonging to the British Museum, (each with an associated hieroglyph to discover), this is such a fun way to introduce very young children to history. (The final spread is devoted to photographs of these and there’s a QR code to scan for more information about the objects shown.)
Equally, with such engaging illustrations and simple repeat pattern narrative it’s also great as a beginning to read picture book.

Some interesting reissued board books are:

Alison Jay’s 123
Alison Jay’s First Words
Templar Publishing
In 123, Alison Jay uses a fairytale landscape for counting as a girl dreams that she travels upon a golden goose to different fairytale scenes.  Each new spread features a number from 1 to 10, and then counts back down to 1 again.  Observant readers will notice that on every spread, the artist includes other sets of the number featured.  She also leaves a visual clue that suggests the next spread and perhaps beyond.

First Words begins with a grandfather clock face surrounded by decorative images that point to the four seasons and to what is to follow on subsequent pages. There are visual allusions to nursery rhymes in addition to the opening Hickory Dickory Dock (yes there’s a mouse atop the clock); we see Jack and Jill climbing up the ‘hill’; while for instance, ‘hat’ and ‘fish’ allude to ‘12345 once I caught a fish alive’

The book spans a whole day, but moves through the seasons too. Featuring seemingly random objects, Jay also uses foreshadowing in this book – an added talking point for children and adults; and each page having just a single word leaves readers free to make up their own stories.
In fact I see both these not so much as concept books but as starting points for promoting talk and visual literacy.

I’ve signed the charter  

How To Be a Hero / Mary Had a Little Glam

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How to be a Hero
Florence Parry Heide and Chuck Groenink
Chronicle Books
Anyone who has read The Shrinking of Treehorn will be familiar with the author’s wry humour: that same humour is inherent in this posthumously published picture book. Meet Gideon, a nice boy who lives with his parents in a nice house and has, seemingly, everything a boy could want. What young Gideon really wants though is to be a hero but he’s not quite sure how to go about it. He has some ideas though: You have to be strong, brave and clever like this surely?

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After further foraging into fairytales such as this one ‘the story where a witch gives a girl a poisoned apple and when she takes a bite she goes into a deep sleep which is sort of being dead but not really and nothing will get her awake except a kiss and someone does see her sleeping there and he kisses her and he’s a hero, just like that.’ however, he comes to the conclusion that really, all this heroism takes is just being in the right place at the right time. QED! Well that and err… keeping your eyes open. This does entail actually noticing what’s going on around you though – something of which Gideon appears unaware, as heroic act opportunities present themselves to left and right as he heads, eventually, to the supermarket to spend his pocket money.

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There, a heroic act is, assuredly performed but by whom? Yes, Gideon is the recipient of a whole lot of media attention but for what? Wish fulfilled, he’s certainly front-page news – a hero. Err? He certainly thinks so.
Groenink brings out the subtle humour of the telling beautifully; it’s there all the way through if you look closely – very closely in some places; and in others, such as the shop sign with its reference to Propp (Vladimir – Morphology of the Folk Tale) and (Bruno) Bettelheim above the butchers it’s likely to go over the heads of young children. I love the way he switches from the dreary reality of Gideon’s home and locality to the more colourful fantasy world of the fairy tale world he visits in his imagination.
Certainly with this book, it’s a case of what you bring to the story making a big difference to what you get out of it.

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Mary Had a Little Glam
Tammi Sauer and Vanessa Brantley-Newton
Sterling
A funky take on the nursery rhyme wherein fashion fanatic “I must accessorize” Mary starts school determined to make her mark. Seemingly her classmates at Mother Goose school are happy to merge into their surroundings though …

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Mary however, is set on bringing a whole lot more glitz and glamour to her pals. She gets to work adding accessories and generally jazzing up not just the pupils, but everyone and everything in her school.

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Playtime comes and with it a realisation that Mary and her decked-out pals are way too over-dressed for energetic outdoor romping and rampaging. No matter – Mary can turn her hand to un-accessorising too …

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and she’s certainly queen of messy play – hurray for Mary.
With its bouncy rhyme and suitably flamboyant illustrations of Mary and her supporting cast, this is lots of fun to share with those around Mary’s age.

Story Box

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Story Box
Anne Laval
Laurence King Publishing
Open up Story Box and you will find a set of twenty double-sided jigsaw pieces – a mix of beginnings, middles and endings – that can be arranged and rearranged to tell a whole host of different stories. In her engaging illustrations, Anne Laval has provided details that allow for users to take the story in a variety of directions depending on the way their imagination works at any particular time.
You might choose to start with a king standing with a princess in a castle turret: the king is waving but to whom? And what about the young princess; she’s gazing in another direction – what are her thoughts?
Turn the piece over and there are three characters – a man, a woman (holding a hen) and a boy: are they parents and a son? Farm workers? The boy is smiling? Why might that be?
Take another piece – an inbetween one, maybe this … Ahh! Might it be an alternative version of Jack and the Beanstalk perhaps …

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or you might choose to send the boy off on his horse on a quest of some kind.

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There are all manner of fairytale characters he could encounter – a witch, dwarves (seven of them), a wolf clutching what one child thought was a shuttlecock but on closer investigation decided it’s a pepper pot (but could it be a sprinkler with something else inside?)

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Oh! and there’s this pink rabbit – large here …

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but not in other scenes: again he offers all manner of possibilities …
The witch’s house, the castle, the woods, a cave, an ice-ream van even, supply background for scenes to unfold as a story progresses.

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With such fairy tale motifs as a sword, a beanstalk, a basket of rosy apples users may want to stay close to the familiar or alternatively, let their imaginations run riot before finishing up with one of the half dozen endings available. Here are three of them …

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This is a great classroom resource that can be used across a wide age range from nursery up. Its potential depends only on the setting and of course to a certain extent, the creativity of the teacher and children using it. It is absolutely brilliant for developing speaking and listening skills, for building co-operative skills, for storytelling and writing, (maybe with an adult scribing) for drama, as starting points for art and craft in two or three dimensions – the possibilities are enormous.
If there are children learning English as an additional language in the group, an adult could tell a story pausing to ask the children to look for the appropriate card piece, gradually building a chain as the narrative progresses.
Alternatively a small group could be given several pieces each and sitting in a semi-circle, take turns to add a piece to the tale supplying the narrative to accompany it.
I could go on, but suffice it to say, the contents of this box cries out to be played with. ‘Narrative’ says Barbara Hardy, ‘is a primary act of mind’; here is a resource to get started with.

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