Tag Viola Wang

The Brilliant Brain

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The Brilliant Brain
Dr Roopa Farooki and Viola Wang
Walker Books

I wonder how many young children realise just how crucial a role the brain plays in controlling what happens in the human body. When I asked nearly four year old Faith where her brain was, her reply “In my tummy” (as her mum is a GP, I think maybe she was joking) it made me realise we had better start sharing Dr Roopa’s guided tour around the brain and its amazing workings, aimed at young children.

Having confirmed that the brain’s location is in her head, how big it is and its role as a kind of ‘control room’, we explored the rest of the book. Herein it’s explained that our brains are responsible for our thoughts, feelings and memories,

as well as for telling our legs to walk and our lungs to breathe. It’s good to see the author doesn’t shy away from using such anatomical terms as cerebrum and cerebellum

as well as naming the various lobes, the spinal cord and nerves, each of which is defined.briefly. I like too, the way she explores in gently humorous, age appropriate language, the interconnectedness of the body’s systems. Her enthusiasm for her subject is evident and in a final author’s note, Dr Roopa shares some tips on how to look after the brain. Throughout, Viola Wang’s bright illustrations with just the right degree of detail, elucidate the author’s text, making this an ideal book to read with foundation stage children both at home and in an educational setting.

I look forward to further titles in Dr Roopa’s Body Books series.

Poetry Prompts

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Poetry Prompts
Joseph Coelho, illustrated by Georgie Birkett, Grasya Oliyko, Amanda Quartey Voila Wang
Wide Eyed Editions

Children’s laureate, Joseph Coelho provides 41 ways for readers to ‘discover the poet within.’
His first prompt is to have a dedicated notebook of your own that you can always have to hand when an idea arises; he even demonstrates how to make such a book from a single sheet of paper.
He then proceeds to one word poems; the trick so we read, is to have a long title. If this idea works for you, you can he suggests, in his first ‘poetry power-up,’ write several on the same theme for example: ‘The Sound of Water / Splash. // The Feel of Water / Cold. // The Taste of Water / Nothing.’


There are suggestions for penning poems that use rhyme and repetition, alliteration, onomatopoeia, similes, and metaphors as well as certain poetic forms such as haiku, and more challenging, triolets.
Most of the ideas are relatively light-hearted but there are also prompts for a ‘Home Is …’ poem in relation to World Refugee Day, and another for plastic pollution.


The four illustrators portray a diverse cast of children, as well as playful images of fauna, flora and an abundance of food ,

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which offer further inspiration. The message that poetry is “about having fun with words” comes through loud and clear. I envisage lots of primary age children having great fun with the ideas in this book. (If used in a classroom though, it would be advisable, I think, to include prompts for some non-Christian festivals as well as those for Christmas and Easter.)



Rabbit Bright

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Rabbit Bright
Viola Wang
Hodder Children’s Books

You might want to have your sunglasses ready when you read Rabbit Bright with its dazzling day-glow colour palette.

Rabbit Bright has finally summoned up the courage to turn off his night light. But thinking about so doing, sets the little fellow wondering, “ … where does the light go when it’s dark?”

Instead of sleeping, it’s helmet on, panda clinging on behind and off he goes on his bicycle out into the blue-black night with this thought in mind: “If there’s dark, there must be light.”
And light there surely is; for first he sees a sky lit up by fireworks.

Then, having left his cycle, he boards an underground train with its glowing headlamps.

In the forest too he encounters light, in the form of bright-eyed nocturnal creatures.

Boarding a boat, he paddles off to a cave where the darkness is punctuated by the flashes of fireflies.

His journey of discovery continues in a sub-oceanic craft and our little explorer is almost dazzled by the sea creatures shining as they swim.

Having next, climbed a hill for a spot of star-gazing, Rabbit and panda float off into space.

Then mysteriously, that bicycle reappears, for the two to set off homewards where a cosy bed awaits. Sweet dreams Rabbit Bright; sweet dreams little panda.

If you have, or know a little one who has anxieties about the dark, then this is the perfect book to share with them. Not only is it an exciting story, beautifully and arrestingly illustrated, it should help to assuage those fearful feelings about turning off the light and being alone in the darkness.