Baker also makes use of fading to show imaginary figures which the bright children I was reading to picked up on right away. As he travels through the rain forest, he finds 'ghostly' images, including a dinosaur, a young aboriginal child and a holiday resort build by the sea. com for extra math practice, multiplication worksheets, fraction calculators, printable charts and free home school resources! We walk with him among the ancient trees as he pretends it is a time long ago, when extinct and rare animals lived in the forest and aboriginal children played there.

When a young boy visits a tropical rain forest, he pretends it is a long time ago and that extinct and rare animals live in the forest, and aboriginal children play there. As the boy rambles through the rainforest he thinks about people and animals that have been here before him long ago.The lifelike collages felt like an export on to a journey through an exotic rainforest and had me hooked right up to the end where I saw how, like so many other nature filled areas, are "now being threatened by civilisation". Students will also create speech bubbles and written dialogue for one or more of the characters and place them in an appropriate spot on the pictures. It would be a great book to use in guided reading and would also be a good story from which the children could create a creative writing piece, based upon the future predictions of land developments within the story, their local area and/or even the city they live in. The boy in Where the Forest Meets the Sea imagines all kinds of things through the trunks of the trees and leaves of the forest. After wondering how long it took the trees to grow this tall, the boy imagines what will happen when this secret place isn’t so secret anymore and buildings start to replace the ancient forest.

What really appeals to me about this book are the illustrations which are collages constructed from different materials including modelling clay, papers, natural materials and paints.I enjoyed reading this book as it was beautifully illustrated and there were hidden images which were exciting to find. Through a short oral presentation, students should demonstrate an understanding of the features of the different environments, and how the characters interact with it. I was somewhat less enamored of the story (my favorite book by her is nearly wordless) and (while I’m sure it’s true to culture) I wasn’t enthusiastic about her showing as a positive the killing, cooking, and eating of fish in a book purporting to try to save the environment. Repeat this activity with some more complex topics, such as ‘our forests are being destroyed’ (link this to the last double page spread in the text). In their groups, students are to discuss the Daintree Rainforest and why and for whom it is a ‘special place’.

Or take a side trip from Cairns to Kuranda into the world’s oldest continually surviving tropical rainforest with the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway, to immerse yourself in the sights, sounds, smells and tranquility of the rainforest. At the Ferntree Rainforest Lodge, a peaceful oasis set among trees, the pool table and single TV set in the communal room don’t hold the kids’ attention for long. My father says there has been a forest here for over a hundred million years," Jeannie Baker's young protagonist tells us, and we follow him on a visit to this tropical rain forest in North Queensland, Australia.I really enjoyed how the little boy thinks back to all the things that the tropical forest (in North Queensland, Australia) has seen over the years, like dinosaurs roaming and aboriginal children playing in the huge trees.

Within this role she has worked in the U Can Read program, helping families that have children who struggle with reading. At the end of the book the boy sagely asks the question, “Will the forest still be here when we come back? There is little text but that only further enhances the book: what needs to be said is and the rest is left to the adult and child to talk about as much or as little as they please. Have them complete the think board (PDF, 105KB) exploring the elements of the place and what makes it special. This book was featured as one of the selections for the September 2015: Rainforests discussion for the Picture-Book Club in the Children's Books Group here at Goodreads.The environmental message here is even more obvious than some of Baker's other works, but any preachiness is redeemed by the gorgeous art. It's a fun story to read aloud and we enjoyed reading it together and pointing at all the interesting details we saw in the picture. Due to the nature of the book with its' fantastic images, it can be used across a wide range of ages. Feel free to share a lesson using the link to the right and earn some extra cash for your hard work. In a classroom setting, this could be the basis for discussions about climate change and the natural world (including looking up the forest where the book is based to see what it is like now) or as an art activity (collecting things from outside and creating pictures with them).