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The Arrival


The Arrival

Shaun Tan

 

The Arrival is a 128-page book of illustrations that has no words. Through a series of connecting images, it tells the story of a migrant leaving his home country, crossing an ocean to a strange new city, and learning how to live here. From the nature of the illustrations the book could be set around the late 1800s or early 1900s.

The way that Shaun Tan has produced this book is one that would stimulate student imagination. Using this in a lesson and having the students come up with their own story to carry with the illustrations would produce some quite interesting stories given the imagination that some students have.

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Woolvs In The Sitee


Woolvs In The Sitee 

Margaret Wild 

Woolves in the Sitee

This story is about a young homeless boy named Ben, who lives by himself and develops a friendship with a woman upstairs.  Ben’s world is one of woolves, it’s a frightening and dark place where he faces his fears daily and even adults find it hard to live in.  As the story develops we get a glimpse of the world from his point of view and we are invited to see through his eyes, travel down the roads he walks, see the things that frighten him and, eventually are invited to join him on his adventure to face up to the things that might scare and frighten others.

Margaret Wild has chosen to write this story in a way that many would consider to be different from the norm, she used phonetic spelling throughout the story (city = sitee, wolves = woolvs) and supporting this with emotive and haunting illustrations. This story could be used in a lesson that is based around phonetic spelling, having the students go through the pages and see if they could find the words spelt that way and see if they can spell them correctly. Due to the story line and the emotive and haunting illustrations used this would only be appropriate for students in years 6/7. 

 

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The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness


The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness

Colin Thomspon

 

 This story is about about a young lad named George who lives with his Grandmother. George is quite a lonely young lad because he is an only child and in there is a big empty space where his parents should be. One day on his way home from school, George visits the animal shelter. There, in the very last cage, is Jeremy, a sad dog who looks as lost and lonely as George feels. George and Granny decided to take Jeremy home to live with them and their whole lives change, they learn that when it comes to love, it's quality not quantity that counts .

There are quite important themes that are covered in this story that will more than likely apply to a lot of students in schools today, they are Love, Loss and Loneliness. The chance of there being at least one student in every class who has experienced the loss of a loved one is higher than it probably should be. This book would be great to use to introduce a lesson around dealing with loss and loneliness to show students that 'when it comes to love, it's quality not quantity that counts'.

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