Tag Maggie Li

The Little Worried Caterpillar / Dig Dig Dinosaur

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The Little Worried Caterpillar
Christine Pym
Scholastic

Little Green is on the brink of change. However she’s not aware of this when she wakes early one morning ready to play with her caterpillar pals, but she can’t find them anywhere on the ground. Then a call tells her that they have morphed into butterflies and are way up above her. “You’ll be next, there’s no doubt!” they tell her. However rather than sprouting wings, she sprouts fear, a fear of change that brings with it worries about the unknown. Her friends reassure Little Green that change is what they were born to do and it’s exciting but this makes her feel even worse.

Along comes bee with what is meant to be some helpful advice; she gets momentary relief but that’s all.

Other creatures also offer suggestions but nothing works until Rabbit appears on the scene. Rabbit listens and what her new friend tells Little Green enables her to feel ready to embrace and prepare for that transformational change

and become … Butterfly Green.

Some young children take change in their stride, others needs considerable support from empathetic friends and understanding adults. A book such as this one is particularly valuable for sharing with the second kind. Christine Pym’s illustrations capture so well Little Green’s fearfulness and eventual delight.

Dig Dig Dinosaur
Professor Anjali Goswami and Maggie Li
Nosy Crow

Three intrepid little explorers with their kit at the ready are on an expedition in the hope of finding something, something ‘REALLY big’. Dig! Dig! Dig! they go till one person discovers some remains of a sharp clawed dinosaur. These claws make the finder conclude that they belonged to a Velociraptor.

A second child’s Dig! Dig! Dig! digging unearths three large horns: young readers can perhaps guess from which dinosaur these came..

Still intent on finding something even bigger, they continue hunting till the third explorer tells of a dinosaur with a very long tail. and a tiny head supported by an extra long neck.

Little ones can have fun guessing what this might be before the big reveal fold out … They will also enjoy the peep hole pages showing the skeletal remains the young explorers find during the dig.

The Amazing Human Body Detectives

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The Amazing Human Body Detectives
Maggie Li
Pavilion Children’s Books
I learned something new today, (though I could say that’s true of pretty much every day when working with children). I discovered from Maggi Li’s new book that blondes have more hairs than others.
The human body fascinates most young children – how it works and what it can do. In twelve double spreads (plus contents and glossary) Maggi Li takes readers through the basics introducing first the main organs (Busy Organs as she calls the heart, lungs and kidneys)

 

 

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wherein alongside the essential facts of function and size, is a ‘body challenge’ and, in this instance, Laugh Factory stating ‘Laughing is good for you so get giggling!’ Children will delight in using that as a reason for so doing, I suspect.
In fact the whole book is presented as a journey with readers invited to take the magnifying glass from the front cover and use it to explore within. They might take a look inside the mouth at the teeth, or look closely at the skin to spot goose pimples, for instance. Quirky facts are writ small within each page of the book and you can even get close up to a bogie –

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another favourite with children. But the most read spread in my experience is assuredly Waste Factory

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with its focus on burps, hiccups, wee, sick, trumps and in particular The Bristol Stool Chart with its associated Body Challenge.

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This is the one I suspect that will get most take up!
There is a surprising amount of human anatomical information for readers to discover between the covers of this book. The clever thing however, is that with the emphasis on exciting and intriguing visuals, rather than dense blocks of text, children do not realise just how much hard information is embedded within each spread. And, once their interest has been stimulated there are further suggestions for on-going investigations on the final spreads
Definitely one for the family bookshelf or primary classroom.

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