"Three woodland friends (a hedgehog, a goose and a rabbit) puzzle over the identity of a very strange creature asleep in the hollow of a tree. It has orange rubbery feet like a goose, long ears like a rabbit and a thick woolly coat like a lamb. "
I read it to my four Kindergarten classes this week and the story certainly captured their interest and kept them guessing as to what the creature was. When the answer is revealed on the last page there was a loud sigh of 'oh yeh', as they put the clues together. We had talked the previous week about just what 'curious' meant and many remembered that it had two meanings. The hedgehog, the goose and the rabbit were curious to know what the creature in the hollow was. They thought it was 'curious' because it was 'strange' to them. Once the children knew that the creature was a child they then wanted to talk about whether she was curious or not. We made a list of things she could be curious about. With older children you could also discuss who has the wild mind in this story and get them to support their reasoning with evidence from the book.
This book is the debut picture book for New Zealand author Sarah Grundy. It won the Storylines Joy Cowley Award in 2016 for Sarah and the illustrators, husband and wife team Ali Teo and by John O'Reilly. If you do not have this book in your library, but you have a subscription to Story Box Library, you will find it there.
This is a perfect book for the CBCA slogan. You are certainly discovering some wonderful treasures this year.
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