Once you start it, you won't be able to switch it off!
Advantages:
Many
Disadvantages:
None
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
A delicious sardine with grated carrot” is offered to an unhappy elephant for tea, “I can’t wait’ Grunts Mr. Large.
Jill Murphy has written a simple children’s story about a family of elephants who have to go on an enforced diet by Mrs. Large who has decided she is too fat. Not only does she recommend a healthy diet but a healthy life style as well. No T.V. just a jog round the park. Mr. Large and the children try to please, but notice that they are not losing any weight. Then the test comes in the form of a lovely cake from Granny. Will they eat it?
The story has a double meaning from the cake, and pieces of it, and the saying that something is as easy as ‘a piece of cake’
Jill Murphy is an author and illustrator, the illustrations are large clear, bright and colourful. On one page Mrs. Large is complaining about how fat she is, the illustrations show her in a pink slip with fluffy pink slippers. There are fascinating expressions on the elephant’s faces throughout the book. This is a pure delight, capturing their thoughts without words.
Jill Murphy has won awards for her books. She has written and illustrated four books about the Large family, these can now be bought in one hard back. She has also written many others. I have always found her books very entertaining.
This book to me is not just a book for children to read and then put on the book shelf. I know this is unusual for a book review but I thought I would share with you how I have used the book apart from just reading it as a story.
This is the book I used for my daughter when she needed help with her reading. (See my reading op). I will not write too much about the text but it has many key/ high frequency words like, it, to, of ,the, said, was, and, not- These kind of words are the first words children learn. For the more advanced reader there are words like trooped, healthy, and caught. There is also an introduction to antonyms with thin and fat. This can be introduced as the beginning of a list of antonyms. What others do children know? There is even onomatopoeia to be discussed with the words, wibbly wobbly, can children think of other words like this?
It is an excellent book for punctuation because it includes the usual capital letters and full stops as well as speech marks, exclamation and question marks. For reading aloud the expression in voices can be very amusing it is great for sharing with a child who is not a confident reader because you can read the book and the child could be one of the characters depending on their level of reading, but they must follow the words to know when it is their turn to read. They then feel that they have read some of the story and they will feel part of it.
After reading and discussing the story a few times, it can be used in role play. There are five members in the family Mr. and Mrs. Large and their three children. For a class of thirty this fits nicely into 6 groups. The children are asked to play act the story for a short time. Then they have to perform it to the rest of the class acting as an audience. The children love this and it is an excellent way to approach feeling words, as young children only tend to recognize happy and sad.
Fold a piece of paper or card and ask a child to design their own picture for the front cover and the blurb for the back. If a child cannot write you can ask them to explain the story to you while you write it for them. Then let them copy it on the keyboard or paste your written version on it. This will help you to recognize how well the child has understood the story. Remember to include the author and illustrator’s name on the front cover. Discuss the money, how much did it cost/ how many would five books cost?
This book has a large amount of speech. So it is an excellent book for a group of children to either read as a play, with a strong reader as the narrator. On the first page there is a three way conversation, this can be photocopied and cut up then given to children to sequence in order.
For younger children you could trace or draw an elephant and let them draw and colour the clothes they would like to dress them in. This is interesting as the children can look at the clothes that are worn for different occasions or different times of the day. There are morning and night scenes which lends itself for discussion about different times of the day.
For older children the words ‘healthy living’ can be brainstormed and discussed. This can either be about healthy foods or exercise or both.
There are many interesting points in this book for the emergent reader, on another page there is a cake in a thought bubble, this is linked to the text rather than an elephant. So this lends itself very well for discussion. The cake could be shared by using mathematics. How can it be cut equally into five pieces. A recipe for the cake could be written and cooked! A discussion about the parcel, how could the cake be wrapped so that it did not get squashed, how was it kept fresh? What part of the country did it come from? Look at a map.
There could be discussion about whether the book is fiction and what do elephants really eat? Children could then look up information books or find information on the internet to find out about real elephants. There are so many more ways this book can be used. I could write all night!
The book is published by Walker Books Ltd., Isbn 0-7445-2016-9 On Ebay it is being auctioned for 99p and Amazon has it from £2 upwards. I paid £3.99 a few years ago, for my 1991 edition. It was first published in 1989.
I must add brain storming ideas from this book is ~ ‘A piece of cake!’ Teacherofhooch.
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