Literacy Resources

This is a fairly dark story about what happens when we destroy nature.  As the buildings and ‘others’ take over the text becomes harder and harder to read – just as it becomes harder to hear in the story.  This is an interesting book telling a story that is occurring more and more frequently in children’s fiction.  The trailer for the film of the book that Marc Craste has made with STUDIOaka is excellent.

Definitely one to listen to without the images first to see what sort of story it suggests.  The camera angles are interesting  and worth exploring.

What I find most disturbing is that although nature seems to win through at the end it doesn’t really because the wild area is created in a glass dome rather than being a true ‘outside’ space.  The book reminds me of The Paradise Garden by Colin Thompson where the boy escapes the noise by visiting and staying in the park – or that is one reading of the story.  It also has some links with The Rabbits by john Marsden, illustrated by Shaun Tan who by the way would make a great author/illustrator study.

Other things worth exploring in the book are the use of light and dark and the use of  anthropomorphism.

Reviews of the book can be read here and here.

Let me know what you think.

A wonderful trailer for use in literacy.  How soon before you know whether the thing carrying him is friendly or not?  What are the clues?  What effect does looking up at the tree canopy give?  How would you describe that opening in writing?  From whose point of vew?

Children could capture an image of the text and put it into Photostory or MovieMaker and add their own images to show what they hope for, fear, consider to be an adventure  and how they are a wild thing.

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and Safe From Harm by Rollo Armstrong make a great pair of books to use in guided reading to compare and contrast.

Read this post to find out how to download from YouTube to take a film into the classroom.