Mrs Noah's Pockets

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Intriguingly illustrated, it imparts an exciting sense of the strange-beasts cultures held in common in countries around the world, despite their geographical distance.

Grangetown Primary School - Mrs Noah Project - Year 4 Grangetown Primary School - Mrs Noah Project - Year 4

Graffeg have had the pleasure of working with Eva on a number of projects over the past few years, furnishing us with an added educational resource for many of our books.They created their own and wrote a non-chronological report to inform others of their magical creation. The Lost Words is a collaboration between myself and Robert MacFarlane, author of Landmarks and The Wild Places. Year 4KM delved into the Mrs Noah’s stories to link with our time away from school and talk about our feelings. Kevin Crossley-Holland’s Norse Myths: Tales of Odin, Thor and Loki (Walker Studio) will delight both the newcomer and the Norse aficionado, instantly immersing its reader in the tragedy and treachery synonymous with the Scandinavian pantheon.

Jackie Morris Artist Book List - Jackie Morris Artist

When Mr Noah builds the ark, he makes two lists - one for all the animals who will come on board and one for those troublesome creatures he will leave behind. We began by reading ‘Mrs Noah’s Pockets’ and writing about the special items we would take in our own pockets if we had to leave in a rush. Meanwhile, Mrs Noah is busy sewing, clue in the title, and visiting parts of the woods that are her special domain. Before you start sharing the story you might want to talk about the story of Noah’s Ark (see link below with a retelling).Noah’s biblical namesake appears in Mrs Noah’s Pockets (Otter-Barry), starring a subversive, smiling seamstress who turns conservationist when her husband starts striking “troublesome creatures” such as unicorns from his list of the elect of the ark’s passengers. More sophisticated is The Atlas of Monsters by Stuart Hill and Sandra Lawrence (Big Picture), a pleasingly different addition to the well-worn trend for themed children’s atlases. Luckily her famous pockets contain seeds and she has some help from the children - and the creatures. The language is beautiful, opening with the extremely simple sentence “it rained” and continuing with rich evocative sentences, until “then one morning everyone awoke to silence”.

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New parents, especially, will delight in the tenderness that permeates Jeffers’ first foray into non-fiction; the gentle text, both humorous and admonitory (“You have a body. We thought about what would happen if the animals escaped on the ark and learned all about vibration, by using different instruments and experimenting with elastic bands and rulers. Mr Noah is busy building the ark and sorting out the pairs of animals to join him, anxious at the same time to ensure that the ‘troublesome creatures’ are not included. Many a gorgeous gift awaits picture book fans this Christmas, including Oliver Jeffers’ Here We Are (HarperCollins), a heartfelt introduction of child to planet in ethereal shades of blue and violet, and a departure from his familiar naive style. If there is a very rainy day, collect rainwater in a jam jar or measuring jug, and see how many centimetres of rain has fallen.We then presented our work to some of our friends and discussed what we had enjoyed about the project. Each of her tears was an almond of pure gold”) interleaved with Jeffrey Alan Love’s iron-dark, silhouetted images. In the original story Mr Noah is the main character making the decisions, sharing this book might lead to discussions about the role of women and girls in history and traditional stories. Look after it, as most bits don’t grow back”) and luminous images add up to quietly glowing treasure.