When the character is written and narrated in the first-person, it makes “the voice of a young narrator easy to recognize… they are often set in familiar places and with characters younger children can connect with,” (Lukens, Smith, and Coffel, 196). Voices in the Park was an interesting piece of children's literature, however I felt like it is geared toward a slightly older reader only because it can be difficult to follow. In a parallactic story, the audience is offered more than one perspective of the same temporal event. In their independent activities, children further apply their inference skills to answer questions in role, or complete a table detailing who thinks what about who!

One Y6 class I worked with recently listed the following ideas: happiness; relationships; money doesn’t make you happy; making friends; the dogs are the happiest; posh people and snobs; things are not what they seem. Many people are of the opinion that when a reader is able to visualize the characters as animals, which lack certain human elements of socioeconomic status and gender roles, they will be more likely able to relate to them. Whereas, the father is shown in dirty overalls and the text in his voice stated ‘looked through the paper for a job…I know it’s a waste of time’ indicated that he was possibly made redundant for a while and has not found a job since then. To start your critical literacy session with the kiddos, I suggest that you read the book and have the discussions anytime but bedtime. Elementary school teachers can use this text as a tool to teach the Common Core component, "Craft and Structure.

In this example, we first have the perspective of a snobby, rich mother, next of an unemployed father, then of the rich woman’s son, and finally of the poor man’s daughter. The colors and shading that Children's Literature, Briefly, chapter 4 states, helps establish the settings that each character is coming from, like the use of bright colors for the area where Mom and Charlie's stories begin as well as the darker neutral colors at the start of Dad and Smudge's stories. Browne ( Gorilla ; Willy the Wimp ) again exhibits his inimitable dry wit, describing a less than idyllic family outing to the zoo. There are many activities for each literacy area to differentiate depending on your student’s ability/age. It was interesting to see how the lamppost now represented a flower, which shoot out of the concrete ground.

The reason we keep asking these questions is to get the children to focus on who is telling the story so we can have more discussions once we have read all four voices. Browne won the Kate Greenaway Award for Gorilla, a hit in England and America, as was his Willy the Wimp. Charles is being acculturated into a patriarchal system in which he will enjoy power but also be repressed by its expectations. This park is a representation of the characters’ inner states, in which no one is truly connected to the others.It’s unlikely these kids go to the same school because of the British public/comprehensive divide in education, but this appears to be a fantasy park. Zarin's (Rose and Sebastian) convoluted tall tale of a small boy benefits from Matje's (A Straw for Two, reviewed below) ominous pen-and-ink illustrations, drawn in a threatening minor key. All of the characters here - save the two dogs - are gorillas or chimps, which is apparently something (using primates of various kinds) for which Browne is known. Drawing on elements of a Celtic ghost story, this delectably well told tale has pitch-perfect prose matched by illustrations that seem imbued with mist and moonlight.

Oh and by the way the main characters are all gorillas, although the story appears to be intensely human. There are two adults, one who is an upper class mother and the other who is an unemployed father and two children, one who is unhappy and lonely despite being part of a middle class family and a girl who might be lower class yet spreads her happiness and joy to her dad and the boy.Seymour (The Gulls of the Edmund Fitzgerald) has some fun with that old saw, ""stubborn as a mule"" in this leisurely paced picture book. I think it would allow rich classroom discussion because we could discuss the why behind the characters of the story. However, all elementary grades can benefit from identifying and discussing the multiple perspectives in this text.

With this first Voices in the Park lesson plan, children will be introduced to the book, and find out that there are four different characters who each tell their version of a trip to the park from their perspective. Strauss explores ``the theme of metamorphosis in fairy tales'' in this stunning collection of 12 dramatic monologues by familiar fairy tale characters at a moment of crisis or confrontation. Plentifully adorned with photos and drawings, McKie's very accessible work follows two interwoven, compelling stories. One day Smudge and Charles (two very different children) take walks to the park with their dogs, Albert and Victoria. In my classroom, we can have a read aloud with a book that is narrated in the first-person and discuss the storyline and what makes it first-person narrated as a class.This is also probably a joke directed at himself, since the author/illustrator has a decorative ‘e’ at the end of Brown.