18th October World Okapi Day

World Okapi Day is observed on October 18th. What's an okapi like? Imagine a zebra mixed up with a giraffe, and you've got it. Only found in Congo's rainforests, the okapi is a solitary,  herbivorous animal whose existence is threatened by illegal gold mining, poaching and the burning forests plants for agriculture purposes. This day aims to raise awareness of the need to protect forest ecosystems, as loss of habitat is directly linked with wildlife extinction. 

Many children won't know what an okapi is, but once they do they will be fascinated. See this short video. 

In 2020 when the Book Week theme was Curious Creatures Wild Minds I had lots of fun with my students identifying many of the less common animals, such as pangolins, aye-ayes, axolotls, tapirs etc and was surprised to find so many books sources which featured theses animals. See my entries from 2020 which feature curious creatures and this book:

• Weird and Wonderful Animals  by Rosella Trionfetti and Cristina Banfi

Once you have introduced okapis to your students, they will begin to find them in the index of many animal books and be bringing you the books to show you.

Two stories that specifically feature okapis are:

• Okapi Loves His Zebra Pants by Terri Tatchell and Ivan Sulima

• Okapi Tale  by Jacob Kramer and K-Fai Steele

Curious Creatures Armadillos (Armadillo Day is the 13th August)

I have been contemplating talking to my students about armadillos because at the moment many of them think aardvarks and armadillos are interchangeable. This is not a major issue because we have neither of these animals in Australia and it is much more important that they know about animals such as echidnas, bandicoots and bilbies etc that live here, but as we are talking about 'curious creatures' and we have books that feature them I thought I would do a little bit of research.  Firstly I noticed that a new Jon Klassen book is about to hit the shelves next year and it has an armadillo in it. Here's the publisher's blurb for The Rock From the Sky

"Turtle really likes standing in his favorite spot. He likes it so much that he asks his friend Armadillo to come over and stand in it, too. But now that Armadillo is standing in that spot, he has a bad feeling about it . . . 

Here comes The Rock from the Sky, a hilarious meditation on the workings of friendship, fate, shared futuristic visions, and that funny feeling you get that there’s something off somewhere, but you just can’t put your finger on it. Merging broad visual suspense with wry wit, celebrated picture book creator Jon Klassen gives us a wholly original comedy for the ages."

Now this armadillo does not look particularly like the ones we have in other books, so all the more reason I need to find a photograph. All the species of armadillos can be found in the Americas. This website gives some good photos and some interesting facts.

Here's the books the library has:

             

• Armadillos by Kate Riggs

• Ape and Armadillo Take Over the World by James Sturm

• The Armadillo fom Amarillo by Lynne Cherry

• Willow the Armadillo by Marilou Reeder and Dave Mottram

• Arnie the Accidental Hero  by Joanne Partis

• Milo Armadillo by Jan Fearnley

• Armadillo Ray  by John Beifuss and Peggy Turley

• An Armadillo in Paris by Julie Kraulis

• Accident! by Andrea Tsurumi

• The Wishing Stone by Steve Smallman and Rebecca Elliott

• The Beginning of the Armadillos by Shoo Rayner 

and two series for chapter book reading young readers

• Hare and Armadillo  by Jeremy Strong

• Adventure Duck vs the Armadillo Army by Steve Cole

Curious Creatures - the Aardvark and the Pangolin

While sharing Hello Hello  by Brian Wenzel with Year 1 classes we looked closely at the

animals on the endpapers and tried to name the animals we saw. There was much discussion of the aardvark. Most students thought it was an armadillo or an anteater so when we got the back of the book where it tells you what the animals are and how endangered they are we discovered that it was in fact an aardvark. The pangolin on the cover caused quite a frenzied discussion as well, so this week we shared Tenrec's Twigs by Bert Kitchen, watched a short BBC Attenborough film clip  on Madagascan animals and  thus looked in more detail at pangolins. This book allows students to empathise with the tenrec as he tries to solve his dilemma.

I went looking in the library for books which would allow further exploration and managed to find:

Pangolins:

• What in the World is a Pangolin? by Edward R. Ricciuti 

• Pangolins  by Victoria Blakemore

• Roly Poly Pangolin by Anna Dewdney

• Pinkie Mouse, Where Are You? by Alison Green and Deborah Allwright

Aardvarks:

• Aardvarks by Maddie Gibbs

• Aardvark or Anteater?  by Tamra Orr

• Awkward Aardvark by Mwalimu and Adrienne Kennaway

• Aalfred and Aalbert by Morag Hood

• It's an Orange Aardvark by Michael Hall

• Can an  Aardvark Bark? by Melissa Stewart and Steve Jenkins

• The Aardvark Who Wasn't Sure  by Jill Tomlinson

And just for fun AA is For Aardvark by by Mark Schulman, Aardvarks Disembark by Ann Jonas and Oi Aardvark! by Kes Gray and Jim Field which is coming soon.

24th July Curious Creatures

I have had a lot of fun reading one of my favourite books to my K to 2 library classes this week. I know Book Week has been postponed until Term 4, but I was keen to get started on displays and exploring the theme 'Curious Creatures Wild Minds'. I wanted to start a discussion of this theme using the bunyip, an Australian mythical creature.

I asked the students to draw a creature. They all drew an animal that they could attach a label to. No one drew anything imaginary, extinct, or an amalgam of many animals. When I said, "Is a creature an animal?" The answer was a unanimous, "Yes." "So are you a creature?" Some hesitation, but finally a yes.

Then I asked the students to look at the picture above. "Is this a creature?" "Why do you say that?"
I asked them to make a mental list of three things they could see in the picture. I scribed the long list and there were some very interesting things on the lists, including a mobile phone, lipstick and a magnifying glass. Next, I asked them for one question they would like to ask this creature. There was the obvious like, "What are you?"; "What are you holding?"; "Who are you?" and  "Where do you live?" but there was also ones like, "Do you have friends?" ; "Why do you only have three toes?" and  "What is on your head?".

Lastly, I asked,  "Is this creature curious?" "What makes you say that?" This lead to a discussion of what the word 'curious' meant and after finding out that there are two meanings and that the second meaning is 'strange or unusual' there seemed to be consensus that it was a curious creature.

I then showed the students the cover of the book, The Bunyip of Berkley's Creek by Jenny Wagner and Ron Brooks, the book that won Picture Book of the Year in 1974, forty six years ago. They now knew what the character was, and many students then had anecdotes that they wished to share.

I read the story, slowly and quietly. The first page sets the mysterious tone beautifully. You could hear a pin drop while I read, so few children knew the book. I stopped only once to discuss and explain the sign which has the long words, 'Environment Preservation' and 'Trespassers Prosecuted'.

After reading, in pairs students discussed what they liked about the story and Year 2 pairs also devised a definition of a bunyip eg A bunyip is ... We listened to each others definitions and then amalgamated the pertinent bits to get something like this...
A bunyip is a large mythical creature which lurks (hangs around) in creeks, billabongs,              swamps and waterholes.

The Year 2 students had decided that bunyips weren't real, but wanted to know more, so we looked for other books in the library with bunyips and on Kiddle which they had used last term. We found these books:
1. What's a Bunyip?  by Nette Hilton and Roland Harvey. 
2. Bunyips Don't !  by Sally Odgers and Kim Gamble.
3. Emily and the Big Bad Bunyip by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley.

The students thought that Harvey, Gamble and Whatley had all seen Ron Brooks' bunyip, because they too had drawn the bunyip with a tail, floppy ears, a very rounded body and it didn't look overly scary.




If you choose to do this, do not show the students the Kiddle entry before you read the books, because it will give them a different view of bunyips from the one Jenny Wagner intended. It is for further exploration for the students who want to read up on Australian folklore or Aboriginal mythology.

Later I found three more books:
• Out of Nowhere by Tricia Oktober
• Rosie and the Bunyip  by Meredith Costain, and 
• The Butti Butti Bunyip by Dianne Bates

If there had been time we could have looked at and compared the four bunyip illustrations that appeared on Australian stamps in 1994, one of which was Ron Brooks' Berkley Creek one.


Well we ran out of time, but all the bunyip books were borrowed, some students went off to explore the Indigenous Book Bins and others took from all the unusual animal books that we had on display!

PS. Jenny Wagner seems to 'like' curious creatures! Her novel The Nimbin is also about an endearing curious creature. It is perfect for primary classes.