Tag pollution

Frog in a Fog

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Frog in a Fog
Marielle Bayliss and Mariela Malova
Graffeg

Frog is in high spirits at the start of this rhyming tale as he boogies on a log along with three bhangra-loving bumblebees; seemingly he hasn’t a care in the world. However that quickly changes as a large lorry starts up emitting foul fumes. Frog then has to make his way through piles of litter of the plastic kind. Then in the fen he continues dancing with Wren and Snipe until foul fluids gush from a rusty pipe flooding the pool and further fumes make the air murky.

Come the evening Frog and a friend rhumba under the stars but what they’re dancing on is a massive pile of trash and suddenly Frog’s leg becomes stuck on a wrapper and the froggy twosome tumble into the mire.

Things deteriorate further still when Grayling flaps her fishy tail and the shimmying pair hit the ground finding themselves too close for comfort to a blazing fire left burning beside the lake. As the froggy friends sit huddled together they ponder upon the horrific pollution they’ve encountered during the day. Happily though Grayling then surfaces once more and tells them the good news concerning a special location; it’s a nature reserve and it’s free from all detritus.

Led by Grayling, they make their way to the reserve. Frog starts to spread the word and to this unpolluted paradise come all manner of creatures where nightly they perform their celebratory dances while in the bog frogspawn floats and glistens in the moonlight.

The message about pollution comes across loud and clear in Marielle Bayliss’s dramatic story. Mariela Malova’s quirky illustrations are full of movement starkly contrasting the delights of dancing with the desolation of the polluted landscapes. I particularly like the portrayal of the wren vibrating with song.

One word of warning for adult readers aloud: you may need a bit of practice to do justice to the rhythm of the rhyming narrative.

Human Town

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Human Town
Alan Durant and Anna Doherty
Tiny Owl

Holding a mirror up to us is this story wherein elephants Junior, Lulu and their parents visit Human Town. Whereas their parents suggest it’s likely to be a boring place, the offspring consider it cool.

On arrival they first peruse the list of rules and then start wandering around, Dad warning of the potential dangers and unpredictably of humans. They pause to watch people entering shops empty- handed and coming out with bags stuffed full of ‘things’. Things, says Dad, make humans happy. The young elephants are shocked to learn that some humans eat sheep, chickens and cows. “You can’t judge them like us, … they’re wild animals,” is Dad’s comment.

The football game is a disappointment; but even worse is the stream full of rubbish and the foul-smelling air, both the results of human carelessness and hence points out Mum, one of the reasons they are dying out;

so too is the “farting car” Junior spies. The church, cinema and school are completely empty: not a human in any of them; and those outside their homes are shown fighting one another

while inside others watch a boring thing called ‘Teevee”.

Then totally unimpressed, the elephants stop for a family picnic before returning home. First though Junior asks one final question about the likelihood of humans becoming extinct. Mum’s answer along with her young one’s response on the last page are thought-provokingly alarming.

Cleverly presenting consumerism, conflict, pollution and the vital importance of the environment and protecting animals, this book is an excellent starting point for discussions with children on those themes. Yes it’s wryly humorous, but the truths of what we see and read are evident the world over: we can no longer turn our backs on what is happening on this planet that we – humans and wildlife – share.

It’s Only One!

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It’s Only One!
Tracey Corderoy and Tony Neal
Little Tiger

This is a cautionary tale about what happens when people’s actions are thoughtless.

It’s set in Sunnyville, a fun, friendly and generally lovely place – until kind-hearted Mouse offers Rhino a toffee. Rhino tosses the wrapper away with the titular comment, but so do a host of other town residents, with one item landing hard on Tortoise’s head and leaving Giraffe outraged at the ever-growing rubbish heap.

To cheer himself up Giraffe picks a flower from the park with the same “What” It’s only one’ comment ,which of course it wasn’t.

Now it’s Penguin’s turn to feel anger, so to cheer himself up at the loss of all the flowers he turns to music – only one song of course but …

Can anyone or anything manage to curtail this catastrophic concatenation that’s caused the entire population of Sunnyville to become grumpy?

Perhaps Mouse has the perfect antidote – or at least the makings of one …

We all know only too well the terrible impact dropping rubbish has on the environment, wherever we live. And I’m sure we all want to be good neighbours – this is something that’s become all the more evident since the start of the pandemic – but it’s all too easy to slip into thoughtless actions such as tossing aside that odd car park ticket or receipt.

There are reminders from author, Tracey and illustrator, Tony at the end of their story, of the importance of considering how whatever we do might be impacting on others and their happiness. However, it’s the cast of characters (I love their zany portrayal in Tony’s expressive spreads) from this smashing and timely book that have the last word.

Share, ponder, discuss and most important, act upon this – it’s only one but think of its potential payoff.

Isadora Moon Goes on Holiday / Freddie’s Amazing Bakery: The Cookie Mystery

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Welcome back to two terrific characters in new stories kindly sent, super speedily by Oxford University Press:

Isadora Moon Goes on Holiday
Harriet Muncaster

Isadora Moon enters a competition and is mega excited to learn that her picture has won a prize – a family holiday abroad.

Despite their initial reservations – the sticky heat, a plane flight the suitability of the hotel and more, her parents are finally packed and ready to embrace a new adventure.

Soon after their arrival Isadora, her mum and little Honeyblossom head for the beach, but during their first dip, Mum is concerned about the amount of rubbish people have thrown into the sea.

Next morning the whole family go on a boat trip and while demonstrating her underwater swimming skills Isadora encounters Marina, a friend she’d made when on a camping holiday. Now Marina too is holidaying with her family and she tells Isadora of the large amounts of rubbish they’ve discovered underwater.

The mermaid gives Isadora a conch shell to use as a communication device and later on she receives a call from Marina begging her to help in freeing a baby turtle that’s got stuck in a tangle of rubbish beneath the ocean.

Despite her parents’ warnings not to venture out again without telling them, Isadora, wand in hand creeps out into the moonlight and is soon diving beneath the waves on a rescue mission.

Even after successfully releasing the little creature, there’s a  huge task ahead of Isadora and for that she needs to enlist the help of her parents. Will they overlook this latest bit of disobedience in a far greater cause – saving our precious planet?

Telling and illustrating it with her usual sparkly magic and pizzazz Harriet Muncaster weaves into this latest story, important environmental messages about the horrors that we thoughtless humans cause the natural world.

Fans of the fangtastic fairy-vampire books will enthusiastically lap up this one, and will very likely espouse the cause of saving our planet too.

Freddie’s Amazing Bakery: The Cookie Mystery
Harriet Whitehorn, illustrated by Alex G. Griffiths

We’re back in Belville town where kind-hearted Freddie Bonbon has his bakery.

As the story opens it’s a lovely spring morning and Freddie is just about to leave on his delivery round leaving the bakery in the capable hands of Amira, his best friend and manager who is putting up a sign advertising for another baker. He’s heading for Van de Lune’s Hotel with a special delivery.

At the same time, the unscrupulous owner of Macaroon’s Patisserie, Bernard, is thinking super-bad thoughts about Freddie, intending to sample one of the  yummy confections he’s just stolen from Freddie and work out what it is therein that so delights everyone.

The following morning Freddie learns that Cookie, the superstar cat staying at Van de Lune’s has disappeared, presumed kidnapped. Can he, with the skills of his small dog, Flapjack succeed in solving the case of the vanishing feline?

The recipe of Harriet Whitehorn’s fun story with its highly satisfying ending, generous sprinkling of Alex’s superbly characterful black and white illustrations, posters, signs, and appropriate capitalisation of the text, plus a culinary glossary and instructions for baking delicious cookies, this is another yummy treat for junior fans of The Great British Bake Off.

Freddie is destined to win even more young book enthusiasts with this, his second mystery.

One World

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One World
Michael Foreman
Andersen Press

Even more pertinent today than when it was first published thirty years ago is Michael Foreman’s almost prophetic One World.

As she looks up at the night sky a little girl contemplates all the creatures that share in the sun’s warmth and the moon’s silvery light.

Next morning she and her brother visit the seashore and together they create their own miniature world from items drawn from a rock pool: a ‘new world with its own forests, its own life.’

As they continue adding items during the day, they realise that their actions have altered the environment around understanding how easy it is to spoil the beauty of the world: the world into which various kinds of poisons are being poured, where forests are disappearing, where creatures all over the planet are no longer safe.

Can they in their own way, do at least something to counter the pollution?

First they remove a tarred feather and the tin can from the pool then with another feather skim off the surface oil before dropping back into it the items they’d collected.

As they leave for home that night the sister and brother decide to ask other children to help them in their cause:

after all, ‘They all lived on one world. And that world too, they held in their hands.’

Stunningly beautiful and thought provoking as it was then and is now, with Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion taking up the cause, this is such a timely re-issue.

A book that needs to be read and discussed in every primary classroom from reception through to older juniors, after which let the action begin or continue … We don’t have much time.

Hello, Mr World

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Hello, Mr World
Michael Foreman
Walker Books
Two small children dress up and play doctors. Their patient is Mr World and he’s not feeling good. In true GP fashion the children ask, “Now what seems to be the matter?”
As the doctors go about making their diagnosis, taking his temperature, listening to his chest and running him through the X-ray machine, Mr World talks of raised temperature and breathing problems and we are shown in Foreman’s telling watercolours the consequences of his malaise. Habitats are under threat;

towns and cities choking with filthy, toxic fumes …

drastic consequences of climate change are evident everywhere and, as the doctors decree, “You must look to the future or things will just get worse …”
The solution is in the hands of Mr World’s human inhabitants; and, to the joy of the doctors, and the threatened animals,
the young children acknowledge that they have a huge responsibility; but it’s a challenge well worth taking up.

If only it were that simple. Fortunately, the final three pages offer a brief real world diagnosis and some small but important actions that children themselves can take to help with the crisis.
Foreman’s treatment of a red-hot topic is powerfully affecting. Almost every day one hears on the news or reads of the adverse effects of climate change: only recently we heard that many children playing outside in their school breaks are breathing toxic fumes for instance, so his book is all the more timely. Likening the world to a patient subject to the diagnosis of two small children at play is a stroke of genius, and makes what is a global issue comprehensible to early years listeners

who are likely to inherit the problems we’ve all helped to create. Seize the day!

I’ve signed the charter 

Line, Colour, Shape and Contrasts: Some Explorations

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Free the Lines
Clayton Junior
Words & Pictures
It’s amazing how much you can say in a picture book without a single word of text. Clayton Junior does it all with lines – straight lines, curvy lines, thick lines and thin lines, lines close together and lines far apart; white lines and black lines. Using all these and the occasional bit of blocking, he tells a story of a small cat in a small boat sailing out into a large ocean to catch fish.

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Into that same water comes a huge, smoke-belching trawler,

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a trawler that casts an enormous net, an enormous net that scoops up everything in its path.

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Fortunately- for the trapped, though not the trawler’s crew – an outstretched paw with a large pair of scissors puts paid to the marine life devastation and cat sails serenely into port over an ocean once more teeming with life.
This thought-provoking tale poses questions about the ethics of fishing and the fishing industry, as well as offering lessons in visual literacy and opportunities to explore and experiment Clayton Junior’s minimalist techniques of creating shape and form. It has something to offer all ages from around four to adult.
From the same artist is

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Alone Together
Herein all manner of animals are shown as a means of exploring a wide range of opposites and contrasts. Each one of the stylish spreads could well be a storying starting point in addition to demonstrating the concepts chosen. This one really made me smile:

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Also worth adding to your early years collection are:

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Blue and Other Colours with Henri Matisse
Squares and Other Shapes with Josef Albers
Phaidon
These are two of the ‘First Concepts with Fine Artists’ series, beautifully produced board books that use the work of famous artists to introduce very young children to everyday concepts.
In the first, coloured cutouts from Matisse’s collages are the basis for teaching not only about colour, but also about shape and form, and how various colours can work when juxtaposed. Although blue crops up on most spreads, here’s one where it doesn’t …

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Both inside covers are used to provide information: at the back is a brief introduction to the artist and some of his works, in particular the cutouts; and at the front, in tiny print, is a key to the works featured with their dates.
An unusual way to introduce colours and the notion of ‘painting with scissors’ and more important, especially if like me, you believe most children do not actually learn colours from books but from life experience, a springboard to creativity.
Equally fascinating and also essentially about colour juxtaposition and perception too, but this time introducing basic 2D shapes is an introduction to the 20th century artist Josef Albers’ work, in particular, Homage to the Square.

At Sea with Captain Cranky & Mayday Mouse

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Captain Cranky & Seadog Steve
Vivian French and Alison Bartlett
Little Door Books
Captain Crankie lives with his canine pal Seadog Steve beside the sea. They spend their days taking villagers and visitors to watch seals and dolphins in the Mary Rose, and their evenings together in their tidy home. However, the locals are a messy lot: they leave all kinds of rubbish lying around spoiling the look of the place and upsetting the captain. Enough’s enough, he decides and he and Steve drag and haul all the rubbish back to their house, load it into the Mary Rose and set off out to sea where they jettison the lot overboard, leaving it to sink down into the depths. Before long though, there is a whole lot more rubbish …which also ends up in the same place deep under the waves much to the consternation of mermaid Millie. She resolves to speak to Capain Crankie and next evening she’s there waiting atop a rock as the Mary Rose heads out with another cargo of rubbish. Before long Millie is leading the Captain and Seadog Steve on a deep sea dive to see the results of the Captain’s thoughtless dumping.

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What’s to be done? It seems Seadog Steve might have a good idea up his sleeve…

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The result of the villagers’ fishing expedition is certainly some unexpected hauls; but it’s not long before everything has been put to a new and exciting use and everyone is happy.

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An important environmental message is embedded in this charming story. It’s told in a straightforward manner that is easy to read and easy to absorb without being simplistic, by Vivian French; and through Alison Bartlett’s richly coloured, detailed illustrations.

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Mayday Mouse
Seb Braun
Child’s Play
I really love Captain Mouse’s spirit of determination and optimism in the face of adversity. She sets out in her walnut shell boat one sunny day with an important mission – to deliver her brother’s birthday present. Her friends bid her “Bon voyage” warning her to keep watch for “big waves and watery perils” and instructing her to shout “MAYDAY” should she need their help. Mouse however is convinced all will be well; but then the wind drops. Undaunted, she whistles a sea shanty three times and lo and behold, back comes the wind and off she goes again with the wind getting stronger and stronger …
Suddenly, down comes the rain, the boat starts filling with water and a storm blows up …

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tossing mouse and boat into the air and towards a crashing sound and ‘a dark and dangerous cave’.
Quick-thinking Captain Mouse steers past only to find herself about to crash into some large rocks and the next moment …

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What is it that Mouse is thinking? Surely not “This is the end of me!” as she hurtles onto a small sandy island where, cold and exhausted, she’s soon fast asleep.

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Is she going to be left stranded or will she eventually reach her brother and deliver that birthday surprise? It’s fortunate then, that she keeps her cool, remembers her resourceful friends’ instructions and …

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Here they come with everything needed for a quick repair to her boat and off they go.
There’s a lovely musical finale that delighted my audience and had them joining in with the birthday greetings .

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Despite the very damp interlude, this is a thoroughly heart-warming story with a plucky little heroine. Good on you Captain Mouse. Did you spot the polluting object in that final scene? It was certainly a hazard for our heroine.

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The Messy Book

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The Messy Book
Maudie Powell-Tuck and Richard Smythe
Little Tiger Press
After reading the opening two or three spreads of this book I was convinced its creators must have been flies on the wall in my home at some time. Here’s how it starts …
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As the story progresses though – and brilliantly, the whole thing is delivered entirely through speech bubbles and hilarious, very messy visuals – it becomes apparent that it’s about much more than merely tidying up your own space. Environmental pollution is its central theme, as cat proceeds to shove the mountain of mess from land …

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to sea …

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much to the disgust of the other animals: dog, elephant, giraffe, the creatures of the ocean, a pair of penguins, oh, and there’s a fox there somewhere too. Yes, we all agree with cat, tidying up can be pretty boring and ways of livening up the whole process present all kinds of exciting possibilities …

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For some of those concerned anyway …

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Oh, oh! It looks like we’re back where we started again but what is all this about hats? Where there are hats there’s usually a party and where there’s a party there’s usually rather a lot of mess … Here we go again …

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Already I’ve had a bit of a rant in other places about the kinds of books that ought to be given to children in the early stages of becoming readers (NOT dull scheme fodder). This is a perfect example of a great book for those in the fairly early stages.
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