The whale sang a song to the snail. Could you write the words to the song or make up a tune for it?

Icebergs, fiery mountains and golden sands, caves beneath the crashing waves, and storm tossed seas are all part of the adventure. And then the whale gets lost and he ends up on the beach in trying to avoid speedboats. It looks like the end of the journey for the poor whale. This precipitates an epic journey that sees the snail and the whale in icy seas, observing mountains and golden sands on the shore, under the sea admiring the sea-life, surviving a thunderstorm and avoiding pleasure seekers in a holiday resort. There are lots of adjectives and other descriptive words in the story which describe different things. Can you find them all? Could you make a poster which shows what they are? But then came the day These are the speedboats, running a race, The whale lost his way . . . Zigging and zooming all over the place, Upsetting the whale with their earsplitting roar, Making him swim too close to the shore. Everyone, including the local firemen rushed to the beach and they all began spraying the whale to keep him cool while some of the children dug around him to provide water from under the sand. Then the tide came in and much to everyone's relief the whale, complete with snail on its tail, took to the water once more.At the end of the story, the snail tells his friends all about his adventure. Can you write what he might have said to them? The human activity makes the humans swim too close to the shore. Can you find out when this might have happened to real whales in the past? Discuss what we might be able to do to stop it from happening again. I also continued to write “grown-up” songs and perform them in folk clubs and on the radio, and have recently released two CDs of these songs.

And she gazed at the sky, the sea, the land, The waves and the caves and the golden sand, She gazed and gazed, amazed by it all, And she said to the whale, “I feel so small.” This is the tide coming into the bay, And these are the villagers shouting, “Hooray!” As the whale and the snail travel safely away . . .And this is the snail with the itchy foot! “A snail! A snail!” The teacher turns pale. “Look!” say the children. ”It's leaving a trail.” This is the trail Of the tiny snail, A silvery trail saying . . . Before Malcolm and I had our three sons we used to go busking together and I would write special songs for each country; the best one was in Italian about pasta. One of my television songs, A SQUASH AND A SQUEEZE, was made into a book in 1993, with illustrations by the wonderful Axel Scheffler. It was great to hold the book in my hand without it vanishing in the air the way the songs did. This prompted me to unearth some plays I’d written for a school reading group, and since then I’ve had 20 plays published. Most children love acting and it’s a tremendous way to improve their reading. My real breakthrough was THE GRUFFALO, again illustrated by Axel. We work separately - he’s in London and I’m in Glasgow - but he sends me letters with lovely funny pictures on the envelopes. I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married.

Imagine that you had to write a newspaper report about the people (and the snail) who saved the whale. What would it say? Donaldson has said that it is one of her favourite books, due to its similarity in rhyming style to the works of Edward Lear, of which she was fond of as a child. [1] Plot [ edit ] Even though the snail is small, he helps to save the whale. Think about your abilities. Is there anything that you thought you couldn’t do, but you managed to when you tried? Read this again (November 2019) as I can't resist the brilliant Donaldson/Scheffler combination. And it is just as good, if not better, than when I first read it. Look at pictures of snails and whales and think of words / sentences / paragraphs to describe them (see Resources below).Look at one of the pictures, without the accompanying text. Can you write about that part of the creatures’ adventure? Could you think of words / phrases to describe what is happening in the illustration? I really enjoy writing verse, even though it can be fiendishly difficult. I used to memorise poems as a child and it means a lot to me when parents tell me their child can recite one of my books. These are the caves Beneath the waves, Where stripy fish with featery fins And sharks with hideous toothy grins Swam round the whale And the snail on his tail. The Snail and the Whale is a 2003 children's picture book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. It won the 2004 Early Years award for the best pre-school book, the 2005 Blue Peter award for Best Book to Read Aloud, and the 2007 Giverny award for Best Science Picture Book. The Snail and the Whale has also been adapted into an unabridged audiobook, a stage play and translated into British Sign Language. In 2019, a short film based on the book was released.