Tag migration

The Dandelion’s Tale

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The Dandelion’s Tale
Margaret Anne Suggs
Graffeg

In this allegorical tale about migration, a group of once happy dandelions is forced to move in the face of tools, machines and weed-killing chemicals.

With their spirits low, they hear the words of a calling breeze that gives them the courage to move from the persecution of their homeland field and float upwards. They drift over the walls, fields, meadows of the countryside, higher over city rooftops, up, up traversing mountains, cliffs and seemingly endless seas of blue.

Finally they find a peaceful place and with hope renewed, land in a green grassy environment to begin life anew;

a tranquil place where the bees and other minibeasts make them feel welcome and where in time, they will become a part of a thriving community of wildlife once more.

The watercolour illustrations are touched by whimsy whenever a minibeast is depicted, helping to keep the fable light in tone throughout the book. The penultimate page gives factual information about dandelion plants – their importance and various uses.

A seemingly simple story about seed dispersal that offers a good starting point for talking with very young children about humans who, in times of crisis, see no option but to flee their homes and seek sanctuary in another country.

Refugees

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Refugees
Brian Bilston and José Sanabria
Palazzo

Here’s a book to make you think hard no matter what your feelings on the topic.

Two opposing viewpoints on migration and the refugee story are presented in Brian Bilston’s poem Refugees.

The first presents the reaction of separatist-minded individuals – all too many sadly – who think badly of refugees deeming them scroungers and wasters after an easy life in a new country: an attitude I fear in the fractured society of the UK at least, that has been fuelled by the current BREXIT thinking of those advocating our leaving the EU. ‘Go back to your own country’ is what people seeking asylum might be told having risked life and limb to find a safe haven.

Read the other way however,

the poem offers a warm welcome to displaced people needing asylum: understanding, compassion and kindness are the order of the day in this alternative viewpoint.

Now I am totally of the second view and have taught countless children from refugee and asylum seeking families from as far afield as Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Pakistan in schools around London gradually coming to know what traumas the families have undergone. More recently, I have befriended one Syrian family who have come to live in Stroud, the town where I currently spend much of the time.

However I am fortunate – one of the ‘haves’ with my own house, car etc. and have seldom been without anything I have wanted let alone needed, so really who am I to condemn those less fortunate – the ‘have-nots’ let’s say, who have little themselves and fear losing what little they have to others – the outsiders.
It is far less easy to understand the prejudice of the powerful and affluent who prey on those suspicions and fears to serve their own interests.

The dystopian world illustrator José Sanabria creates in his first six spreads where refugees arrive in an armada of hot air balloons and guardians of the ‘anywhere’ homeland are depicted as penguin-like police,

distance the dilemma from any particular reality, giving the reader space to ponder the topic transnationally. Those for the second part show open-armed residents welcoming the newcomers with offerings of food, drink, flowers, toys and more.

This poem has already been included in an anthology of poetry entitled From Syria with Love. Presented as it is now in this superbly illustrated book, Refugees offers a powerful and pertinent message for readers/listeners of all ages from KS1 upwards to adults, some of whom might one hopes, start to question their own attitudes.

No matter what, the book ought to be shared, discussed and pondered upon by all.

Migration

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Migration
Mike Unwin and Jenni Desmond
Bloomsbury Children’s Books

Mike Unwin documents the migratory journeys of twenty animals large and small, from the monarch butterfly to the great white shark

and the African elephant to the Southern pilchard, all of which travel incredible distances due to the seasonal changes to the environment in which they live. They move in pursuit of food, to escape bad weather or hostile environmental conditions, or in search of a suitable place to breed.
Each of the animals featured is allocated a double spread impressively illustrated by Jenni Desmond; and there’s a world map showing all the migrations at the back of the book.
Just imagine weighing less than a lump of sugar and having to fly 800km across the ocean like the ruby-throated hummingbird. Come spring, these iridescent birds leave their tropical winter home in Central America, fly across the Gulf of Mexico, north to North America, even as far north as Canada, where they breed, nesting somewhere in woods, a garden or park.

I was amazed to read the fascinating details about green marine sea turtles, which sometimes weigh as much as two humans and migrate across the Atlantic to breed on Ascension Island.

Unwin’s accounts are beautifully, at times poetically written, while Jenni Desmond’s illustrations make you want to linger long over each one enjoying the form, details and individual beauty of each animal portrayed.

Circle and Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

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Circle
Jeannie Baker
Walker Books
This moving story begins even before the title page with its narrator lying on his bed wishing, “Ahhhh – I wish I could fly!” When next we meet him he’s on the edge of the beach of a nature reserve watching the ascent of a flock of birds …

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They’re shorebirds – godwits embarking on their long journey north. (In an author’s note at the end of the book we are told this species makes the longest unbroken journey of any animal in the world migrating 11,000 kilometres from Alaska to their southern home in Australia – where Jeannie Baker has lived for many years and where this book begins – and New Zealand.)
It’s a journey that will continue for six days and nights ‘until they know they need to stop,’ with each bird taking a turn as leader of the flock. Increasingly their familiar safe resting places have been replaced with high rise buildings …

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so their search for food has become more and more difficult but eventually they find a place to stop and refuel, eating as much as possible from the rich mud at low tide. The focus is on the godwit with white patches on its wings and finally he flies solo on to the place he remembers. There he makes a nest, attracts a mate and a brood of four chicks duly hatch …

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of which only one survives the ravages of a fox.
After many weeks, the chick is fully grown and again it’s time to move on, feed themselves up in preparation for when an icy wind heralds departure time for the godwit family and a returning flock, that now undertake the awesome nine day flight which takes them full circle back south ‘Following an ancient invisible pathway high above the clouds’ … to the other side of the world where a welcome awaits …

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I learned a great deal from this beautiful book. Its lyrical text and stunning collage illustrations make for a memorable account of godwit migration and thought-provoking glimpses of the child narrator whose personal ‘flight’ is left to readers to interpret: seemingly he too has undergone a transformation.

There’s an altogether different journey in:

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Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
Dr Seuss
Harper Collins Children’s Books
From starting at playgroup or in a nursery class, this book, with its weird and wonderful landscapes

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and some strange and on occasion alarming encounters …

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can accompany you or your child through life’s journey with all its highs and lows, uncertainties and unpredictability. It’ll help you take risks, persevere against the odds, take adversity in your stride – (‘I’m sorry to say so/ but, sadly, it’s true/ that Bang-ups/ and Hang-ups/ can happen to you.’); because as Seuss, the rhymer extraordinaire asserts:
‘So be sure when you step,/ Step with care and great tact/ and remember that Life’s/ a Great Balancing Act. … And will you succeed?/ Yes! You will, indeed!/ (98 and 3/4 per cent guaranteed.) KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!’
Empowering? Yes. Thought provoking? Ditto!

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Ways Home

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Little Home Bird
Jo Empson
Child’s Play
Little Bird’s home is all he could wish for so when, as the days grow colder and his big brother tells him it’s time to fly south to warmer climes, Little Bird feels more than a little sad. Without his favourite branch, his favourite food, his favourite music and that favourite view of his, the idea of two homes just doesn’t appeal to him. But then Little Bird has an idea: why not take all those favourite things along too, then no matter where he was, it would always feel like home.
Off fly the other birds leaving Little Bird to follow behind; but as the others get ever further ahead, a journey with so much baggage proves too difficult.

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Little Bird has no choice but to start to let go, and, one by one his favourite things find new homes.

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Delighting some of the recipients …

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After a long journey of many days and nights all the birds are safely at their winter home – Little Bird, sans favourite things – but it doesn’t take many days before he starts to discover exciting new things, some of which will become NEW favourite things.

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With those gorgeous illustrations, this is a smashing book to share, especially with youngsters who, for whatever reason, have more than one home.

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Nelly & Nora: The Windy Way Home
Walker Entertainment
The two young characters in this charming book, which is based on Emma Hogan’s CBeebies TV script, are an endearing pair. When the story opens the sisters have been playing down on the sand when suddenly as they lie down side-by-side, they notice the clouds moving fast above them and a bird seeming to fly backwards. “Toooooo windy!” announces Nora. “We should go home,” Nelly replies and off they set up the steps. At the top however the wind is so strong that it’s very difficult to walk and so begins a journey back to the camp that involves observations and experimentation on the girls’ part  …

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not to mention a whole lot of bunching up.

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With a ‘Make your own paper windmills’ activity included, this is just the thing to encourage young children to observe and find out about the world around them.

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