Making It Up

as we go along

Julia Donaldson

Paper Dolls at the New Wolsey studio in Ispwich.

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Another day, another theatre.  

This time we were at New Wolsey studio in Ispwich, for an early years homeed group trip to Paper Dolls, based on the story by Julia Donaldson and Rebecca Cobb.

The illustrations hugely influence this production, featuring the paper dolls (Ticky and Tacky and Jackie the Backie, Jim with two noses and Jo with the bow)  exactly as you know them from the book. Familiar songs join with the theme of the story, giving the young audience chance to join in – Row row row your boat complete with scary crocodile a particular hit!

Scary moments, happy and sad – it’s all there. Tigerboy absolutely loved it, and if Smallest gets better in time, we’ll try to squeeze in a trip for her too. (She was supposed to go today, but didn’t feel well enough.) 

I was sad she missed out, I think she would have very much enjoyed the production. At the same time, it was lovely to be able to focus on a trip out with just Tigerboy, who is very good company when he is on his own, and so you can head off any distractions before he gets well stuck in 😉 He sat cuddled up to me throughout the production, head resting on my arm, and talked, but quietly, about what was going on. He’s ever so observant too, noticing the houses dangling from the ceiling as houses long before they were lit up.

  

The show is kind of minimal in setting – just two actors/ puppeteers and their props and puppets, which are very like the illustrations. I assume they were custom made – I would love a Rosie doll puppet like the one in use. I also love how such simple things as a scarf gives so much to the story – particularly the blue sea.

It is beautifully designed, lit and performed, and I really do hope that Smallest gets better before the run ends,as I’d love to see it again 😉

    

More details at The Theatre website here and a wonderful guardian article about how the play came to be.

Disclosure – none required, bought and paid for 🙂

300 picture books wk 3. Or thereabouts

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Continuing our 300 picture book trek – another good week, including our first library visit. Last week we got up to 23 books, this week we’re totalling 35.

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  1. Bubble trouble
  2. UFO diary. Satoshi Kitamura
  3. Books always everywhere @nosycrow
  4. The littlest dinosaur @KidsBloomsbury
  5. Rosie’s walk
  6. Rex wrecks it
  7. Grandad Pot
  8. Goodnight Tiptoe Polly Dunbar
  9. The Hueys in the new jumper
  10. The disgusting sandwich.
  11. Edward goes exploring
  12. The whales’ song.

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Lots of fabulous books in there. Meta book about books in Books always everywhere from nosycrow, while Goodnight Tiptoe from Polly Dunbar is rapidly becoming a new family favourite. Edward goes exploring will I suspect inspire some educational wildlife walks as the weather improves.

Bubble trouble isn’t one to read when you’re too tired – it’s tongue tying twisters that were challenging at bedtime. Pictures are gorgeous though, and it is a lovely story.

UFO Diary (Amazon link) is very gentle, perfectly illustrated by Satoshi Kitamura, who is one of my favourites I think. I did a feature on his work during 300 Picture books last year.

I’m thinking of doing features on different author/illustrators again this year. I have a couple of Eric Carle books from the library this week, so I might see if I can find a few others and focus on him. Bound to be a few art activities out there as well we can do, and make it a focus of our week.

Or, just discovered The Book People have 10 Julia Donaldson/Alex Scheffler books for £12. Very tempting. I could buy two sets and do a giveaway on the second one….maybe for another week!

I have to say that making sure that pretty much every day we read at least one new book is a really good habit. Alongside the picture books we’re also reading Songbirds phonic readers, and some longer excerpts – last night was a section from a Moomin book, featured in A Little, Aloud, for Children which is a great selection. I also picked up another read aloud longer book from a charity shop, but it’s disappeared. Never mind. Will show up at some point.

So, what have you been reading? Are you following along with #300PBs and if so, where? Do let me know.

Scottish Friendly Children's Book Tour

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For anyone who hasn’t read widely on my blog, a quick heads up – I love books.

I can see the rest of you shaking heads with a no, really? kind of look 😉

I also love sharing books with my children. (That wasn’t news either was it?)

Teri TerryAs well as all of that, I love meeting authors. Long before I had children or a blog, I lived in Sheffield, and worked near a big branch of Waterstones. They regularly had author events on an evening – I would work late, grab something to eat at my desk and then go and sit and listen to an author reading from their work, taking questions from the crowd, and then signing books for people there. I met Terry Pratchett. Deric Longden. Many more who embarrassingly I now can’t remember, and as there was no social media, I can’t look up in my archives.

More recently I’ve been lucky enough to meet all sorts of authors, some of whom I spend lots of time chatting with online. Most recently I took Big to meet Teri Terry at the launch of her third book – a lovely evening out for both of us.

Meeting authors can really bring books to life, giving them an extra dimension. I love it when children get the chance to meet an author hero. And that’s why I think what the Scottish Booktrust are doing is so absolutely excellent.

The Scottish Friendly Children’s Book Tour takes authors into schools all around the country, for free. Children get the chance to meet people like Julia Donaldson, Marcus Sedgwick and the current Children’s Laureate, Malorie Blackman (on tour in Scotland this month!) They are still taking booking for events later this year, so you might want to point that out to your friendly local librarian or teacher, and they don’t cover only Scotland, there’s a tour listed on the site for Brighton and Hove for author Chae Strathie, as well as Nicola Davies touring Argyll and Bute.

From the look of the Booktrust site, a lot of children have had a great time being involved in the tours in the past. I particularly like the Philip Ardagh pic of lots of children with beards 😉 It’s also worth exploring to see the author resources that are available for download, there’s lots on there.

All in all this seems to me to be an excellent initiative, and I’m very pleased to have been asked to write about it.

Disclosure: this is a sponsored post.

300 picture books week 9

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300in2014

lots of bedtime reading this week, mainly of library books. The patternis often that one new one is read and then a couple from previous evenings are repeated. So this week included: Zoo – Anthony Browne. I’m sure this is supposed to be thought provoking. I found it unpleasantly disturbing.

One witch.

Long live Princess Smartypants.

Bringing down the Moon.

Jill and the Beanstalk.

The Great pet sale

Two monsters

Library visit included board book reading.

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(9 in that pile, one’s a duplicate so we read an extra one as well. )

And can I remember what we read at bedtime? Think it was called That’s not funny, had a hyena playing jokes with a banana skin. I read it once, then Smallest read it through to herself almost word perfect. She’s got a phenomenal memory.

Our numeric tally.

17 picture books read making 117/300 (36%)

Books bought – 1

Prizes – 0.

Books disposed of. 0

Library books borrowed – 19 (91? cumulative not sure this is right.)

See week 8