Meerkat Mail is a lovely children's short story by Emily Gravett that follows Sunny the Meerkat as he goes off on his travels. Meerkat Mail is a favourite amongst lots of young children and using these resources can extend your children's learning. Meerkat Mail is a brilliant picture book from Emily Gravett, the winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal. It has wonderfully detailed, witty artwork and a giant, glossy postcard flap to lift on every spread. Perfect for fans of The Jolly Postman – and meerkats! Using this Empty Suitcase Activity your students can draw what they think Sunny the Meerkat would need on his travels around the world. This task gets your class thinking about what items they believe would be essential for travel and what they would like to take. This worksheet provides your students with a sense of independence as they make choices for Sunny. This activity is also a great drawing task and will help develop your students' fine motor skills and allows them to get creative. The other key link is to Geography - learning about the Kalahari Desert, and, in one class, they used that as a starting-off point to compare their local area to different countries which I think was a National Curriculum objective. Older children could perhaps select another animal from another location in the world, research that animal and location on Chromebooks/iPads, and write a series of postcards from that animal's perspective as it discovers unfamiliar environments. Or, perhaps as a September transition activity, children could use the postcard theme to write about their summer holidays. Emily Gravett is a graduate of Brighton University and winner of the 2004 Macmillan Prize for Illustration. Wolves, her first picture book was published in August 2005 and marked the beginning of an internationally stellar career creating extraordinary books for children including Orange Pear Apple Bear, Meerkat Mail and Matilda’s Cat. Her most recent picture book to be published by Macmillan is Little Mouse’s Big Book of Beasts, the hotly anticipated follow-up to Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears. Emily has also illustrated Cave Baby which was written by the former children’s laureate Julia Donaldson.

An exciting and interactive picture book that brings children on a journey alongside Sunny the Meerkat to find out where he belongs. Although, other picture books focus around telling stories like this with animals, the way that Gravett presents the narrative through postcards aids in making this story unique and exciting. For some real fun and creativity try out this great 3D Meerkat Paper Model Activity.Your class can make their very own Sunny out of paper with this great activity. Encourage your students to keep this Meerkat and take him with them on their own travels. They can take pictures and show the rest of the class where Sunny has been. Who is Sunny the Meerkat? The winner of two CILIP Kate Greenaway Medals, her skill and wit are second to none. Emily first sprang into the limelight with the ground-breaking Wolves in 2005, which has been followed by such modern classics as Meerkat Mail, Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears, Monkey and Me and Again! and the fabulous Bear and Hare series for younger readers, as well as the beautiful Tidy, Old Hat, Cyril and Pat and Meerkat Christmas.First published in 2006, this brilliant picture book from the winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal has an eyecatching new cover, wonderfully detailed, witty artwork and a giant, glossy postcard flap to lift on every spread. Perfect for meerkat fans! About This Edition ISBN: With a huge range of resources, you can bring Meerkat Mail into different subjects and use this great story to engage your students' learning. What do these Meerkat Mail resources teach? Wolves was received with great acclaim across the children’s book world, winning many prizes including the prestigious CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal. In 2007, Emily won the Best Emerging Illustrator Award at the Booktrust Early Years Awards for Monkey and Me and the bronze award in the 6-8 category at the Nestle Children’s Book Prize for Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears. In 2008 Emily was awarded her second CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal for Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears.

The most significant activity that this book inspires is English - writing postcards. In Year 1 classes, I've seen children write postcards *in the style of* Sunny, or writing *as if they were* Sunny, going on new adventures. One teacher took a toy Meerkat to her local park and took pictures of him doing various activities (e.g. climbing the monkey bars), then the children selected one or two of the pictures and wrote a postcard based on that. The older children could write more sophisticated postcards, while younger children could focus on following a pre-set template.As the teacher read the book to the children she asked them questions such as ‘what do you think will happen next?’ and ‘how do you think he is feeling here?’. This encourages the children to think more deeply and engage with the story which should help them when they come to do the following tasks.

Read Meerkat Mail with your class and show them the interactive features where your class can pull out and read Sunny's postcards to his family. Once you've got all your students on board with this great story, introduce some of these resources into your teaching to extend your students' learning. Julia Eccleshare, the editorial expert on Lovereading4kids says, Prize-winning illustrator Emily Gravett’s distinctive illustrations are always full of wit bringing the unexpected into stories and injecting them all with delightful humour. There’s magic in Spells as a frog turns himself into a handsome prince – well, almost!, excellent advice for rabbits on how to spot the danger of wolves in Wolves, lots of useful tips on how to be braver than you feel in Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears, a thoughtful exploration of how home often turns out to be best despite feelings of wanderlust in Meerkat Mail, a celebration of exuberant movement in Monkey and Me and a fresh and delightful look at Dogs. This is a sorry about a meerkat who gets fed up with the hot weather and crowded environment with all the other meerkats so decided to travel around Africa to find somewhere better to live.