Explore the Book: Activity Sheets
EXPLORE THE BOOK
Here’s what you can do with Do!
OBSERVATION • Ask children to open any page they like and to describe what they see. • If the children are hesitant to speak, ask leading questions such as: ‘How many animals and birds do you see?’ ‘How many human beings do you see?’ ‘Do you see men or women?’ ‘How do you know who is a man and who is a woman?’ ‘What are these women, men, animals and birds doing?’ • Ask them to read the word on the page aloud, and then ask them leading questions: ‘Why is the word there?’ See if they could choose one picture on the page and relate it to the word.
DRAWING • Get children to look through the book for about 15 minutes. After this, ask them to choose their favourite page and talk about the pictures in it: Why do they like it? Could they point to their favourite picture? • Get children to talk of how their favourite picture is drawn—get to them to notice how lines, circles and triangles are used to create pictures.
Do! is an introduction to basic verbs, aided by the elegantly minimalist pictograms of Warli art. It is a set of action pictures, rendered in the Warli style of tribal art. It introduces basic verbs to the young reader through a series of brilliantly drawn pictograms, which illustrate the verb and tell a story. Warli art is done by people belonging to a tribal community that lives in Maharashtra, in Western India.
• Next, ask them to go to the last page of the book: they can go over the lines with their pencil; or try an image on a sheet of paper. You could also demonstrate how to draw in the Warli style, based on the visual instructions in the last page. • Once children learn to draw a human figure, get them to choose an animal or bird or tree that they like, and draw it using the combination of lines, triangles and circles. Once again, you can demonstrate how this is to be done. • Let children create a scene: with a boy, girl, tree and one or two animals. Ask them to describe the scene they have drawn in one word.
WRITING • Ask children to open the book at random. What is the word on the page? Can they use the word to describe what is going on? For example, if the page features ‘pull’, ask them to notice who is pulling, what is pulling, who is pulling who or who is pulling what and so on. • Next, ask them to write a sentence about each of the characters that they see on the page—the sentence must feature the word ‘pull’ or any other verb that they are working with. • Let each child come up with a verb that describes what they like to do best. Once they have done that, let each of them draw at least 3 figures, which may be described with that word.
Explore The Patua Pinocchio Talk About
Carlo Collodi wrote The Adventures of Pinocchio a hundred and thirty years ago. The story originally appeared weekly in parts in a children’s newspaper, and these the installments were later made into a book. In its own time, the story was meant to discipline children, and to teach them to not be naughty. In the course of time, with changing notions of childhood, this ‘message’ became less important. But Pinocchio’s lovable antics, his love for adventure, and Collodi’s storytelling abilities endured, and turning this tale into a fable of childhood, its perils and joys. This allowed the story to transcend its own time – to become what we would call a ‘classic’. Since its initial publication, Pinocchio has been translated into many languages and appeared in many versions, some of them illustrated by famous artists. One of the hallmarks of a classic is the fact that it can be interpreted differently, by people in different times and places. And so it is with our version of Pinocchio: we worked with a scroll painter from West Bengal, and asked her to illustrate the story in her own colourful style. So the artist’s characters look Indian, and her way of depicting the story is unlike any other version of Pinocchio. In the process, she makes the story her own, and gives it an added dimension, bringing a new meaning to the term ‘universal’.
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Try to find other illustrated versions of Pinocchio, and look at them with the child. What is similar about the various versions? What is different? What is particular about The Patua Pinocchio?
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Pinocchio was written over hundred years ago in another language and in another country. How is it that we read his story today? Use this question to get children to think of how stories travel, which stories travel and why – you could point to what makes a story appealing to children everywhere, using examples from Pinocchio, and then introduce the idea of a ‘classic’.
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Encourage children to find out more about classics: from your library, pick out two books that are considered classics. Talk about them: Who wrote them? Which part of the world do they come from? When were they written?
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Point out to children that books that are considered classics can be recreated – that is, each time a classic is made available, something is – or can be – added to it. Look at The Patua Pinocchio in this light.
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Draw attention to the way the characters are painted. Talk about different styles of painting. Look up the Bengal Patuas and their style of art.
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Explain that this is the first time an artist from India has illustrated this book. How has the artist drawn Pinocchio’s face, his clothes? Is there anything common between Gepetto, the Fire-eater and the Fisherman? What about the Fox and the Cat, and the Talking cricket? Is the Blue Fairy shown differently from the way fairies are normally drawn? Look at the scenes on pages 70, 77, 167. What is interesting about these pictures?
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Can you think of other ways of telling and drawing the story of Pinocchio?
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Ask children to talk about their favourite scene and character in the book and discuss it together.
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Pinocchio is a puppet who becomes a boy – why does Pinocchio want to become a boy?
Activities Make Your Own Pinocchio t
Draw a Pinocchio figure, in profile, making sure that the nose is prominent. Cut it out. Make several copies of the drawing. Draw a series of noses, which get longer and longer. Invent some lies that Pinocchio tells, and paste the noses onto him, as the lies grow.
Create Your Own Pinocchio Story t
Make a list of all the important characters.
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Draw each of the characters, and cut them out. If you’re working in a group, each child chooses one or more characters to draw. Make several copies of the character drawings.
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Make a list of important scenes. Either draw the scenes, or search for the settings in magazines - for example, a studio, a house, a school, the sea etc. etc. Paste the figures into the settings. Write captions to the drawings.
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Put the images in order, and either use them as flash cards to tell the story, or write out the captions and text, and stitch them together as a book.
Explore Captain Coconut and the Case of the Missing Bananas Talk About
Captain Coconut is a one-of-a-kind Indian detective, ready to solve any mystery, large or small. In this zany graphic novel - the first in a series - we follow the good Captain as he moves from his office to the scene of crime, his powerful brain constantly at work - even during the times he sings and dances like a Bollywood hero. Artist Priya Sundram takes Anushka Ravishankar’s hilarious mixture of logic and non-sequiturs to an entirely new level of absurdity, and children of different ages will ‘get’ the book in different ways.
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Here are some suggestions for conversations around the book: questions that children can answer on their own, or along with other children.
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What’s a ‘case’? Who solves cases? Why? Have you ever solved a case? Talk about mysteries, and the satisfaction of solving them.
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What do you think is the best incident in the story? The funniest words? The strangest picture?
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What’s a detective? Is he or she the same as the police? How do we know Captain Coconut is a detective? List the accessories that a true detective must have. Hint: examine Captain Coconut’s office.
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Speculate about the character’s name: why is he called that? Invent other interesting detective names. How would they look?
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What’s your favourite image of Captain Coconut? What’s he made of? Make a list.
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Look at one image and talk about how the artist has put different elements together to create a picture. What is a collage? Is it easy or hard to do?
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Dwell on the mathematics involved in the plot. Would things have turned out differently if some of the bananas hadn’t been ripe?
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Talk about reading mystery stories. Is Captain Coconut like other mystery novels or different?
Activities There is a lot for the child to see, do and enjoy with this title. One well-planned activity, which is also fun, is to help children create their own detective and their own mystery story. There are two ways of coming up with an illustrated mystery tale. The story could be written first, and illustrated later or they can create an image, and write a story around it.
Here are some ideas that you could try out with children. Writing t
Begin by creating a character. Is it a man, woman, boy, girl, animal or thing? How old is the character? What does he or she look like? Does he or she have a long nose, curly hair or a bushy tail? What does he /she wear? Think of something special in the way the character acts or speaks. Give him or her a name. Write it all down.
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Put this character in a place, and think of something strange that happens to her there. Write a story on what she does then, and how she solves the case.
Art t
Put together a character in the collage style: collect a variety of everyday materials old magazines, newspapers, buttons, wrapping paper, tickets, photographs, ribbons, stickers, drawing paper, colours, scissors and glue.
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Begin with a name that will get you started on a character you want to create. Or start making a character, and then come up with a name.
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Pick one element from your pile of materials – say, a photograph or a drawing, and use this as a base to build up a character, pasting in other details.
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Create a scene or location – say, an office or a playground - either by finding a picture to use as a base, or put together bits and pieces to come up with a location.
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Place the character into the location. What is she doing? What’s happening around her? Add to your picture, or make changes if you like.
Combining Text and Art t
Once you have the text and the picture, paste them on two sides of a card, like facing pages.
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If you want to try making a graphic novel-style layout, cut up your picture, and stick the sections separately. You can add the text, or dialogue, with speech bubbles.
Explore the Bhil Carnival Talk About THE BHIL POP-UP CARNIVAL
t Encourage the child to spend some time looking at the book. What all does she think is t What does the child like best of all in the Bhil carnival? Her favourite activity/incident? t The picture book has stories around the things that Neela and Peela do. What other stories
Subhash Amaliyar
can you tell, looking at the map?
t Introduce the child to the background story of the Bhil carnival.
Gita Wolf
hya Pradesh nival called paints the ng with him ona Maciver endering of ok.
going on here? Ask questions about the story and the two characters Neela and Peela.
t Carnivals: what are fairs like in your area? How are they similar to the Bhil carnival? How are they different? Do you need a lot of money to have a good time?
Art
1995
$ 19.95
t Read up and talk about the Bhils. On a map of India, find Madhya Pradesh.
Subhash Amaliyar Gita Wolf
26/06/14 12:28 pm
About the Bhils People of the Bhil tribe from Madhya Pradesh in central India live on the edge of the forest, and work hard at farming, fishing, and gathering firewood. But they also love to have a good time. Each year, in July, they celebrate a wonderful carnival called Bhagoria, which takes place in a village of the same name. The word ‘Bhagoria’ in the Bhil dialect literally means ‘Run!’ We asked Subhash Amaliyar, an artist from the Bhil community, to paint this busy carnival in his traditional colourful style. We then developed his painting into a one-of-a-kind activity book, which combines the features of a map, a fold-out and a story book. Children interact with it in different ways: some in a more linear fashion, and others who make - and then follow - the connections among the elements in a more tangential manner. Here are some ways of extending and exploring the book – we leave it to the adult to match the activity to suit the age group.
t What is a tribe? Are there indigenous people in your country? t Talk about the art of the Bhils. What are its features? Draw attention to the colours, the dots, the rendering of the people and animals, the way all that happens is accommodated into one image, the perspective from high up above…
t Discuss the form of the book: what is the orange line doing? Talk about maps and picture books
Activities t Try guessing how many people are visiting this carnival… (This could expand into a marathon counting session!)
t List the activities going on, particularly those not mentioned in the story book. t Play a game of spotting particular people/animals/things/activities, taking turns at naming/spotting.
t Draw like the Bhils: make spotty drawings of people, animals and things. t Draw your own map of a carnival. t Write a story about a visit to a carnival.
Map Fold-out Make a fold-out, based on the ferris wheel in the book. Older children can try their hands at making the fold-out, while younger ones might need to get a readymade fold-out to create a narrative around it. With the fold-out in hand, create your own pop-up narratives. Once the card is ready, think of the stories it can tell. The form of the fold-out, the surprise it creates, can suggest a lot of possibilities. Try a variation on the theme of the ferris wheel. Or encourage children to come up with other stories, keeping in mind the form of the fold-out.
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Your sheet now looks like this. Turn it over and repeat the last 2 steps.
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Fold a square sheet of paper in half.
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Open it and then fold the sheet diagonally.
3 Open in and fold the sheet along
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Open the sheet and push points A and B inward, so that they meet.
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The sheet should look like this, with points A and B in the middle.
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Fold the bottom edges of the triangle (points C and D) inwards.
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Push points C and D inwards so they meet at the triangle centre.
10 The folded sheet done.
11 The folded sheet when open.
the other diagonal.
They should meet at point E and resemble two wings. Unfold them.
12 Fold-out glued inside a card.
13 The fold-out opened.
Create your own surprise!
Explore 8 Ways to DraW an ElEphant
8 Ways to Draw an Elephant is primarily an activity book — it features the elephant rendered in 8 different Indian art styles. Some styles are bold and graphic, others rely on delicate and intricate lines. Some use patterns, others work with decorative motifs. However, each of these styles captures what is characteristic of this magnificent beast — for some, it is the ears, others, the trunk, for yet others its size. While each elephant looks different, it is evident that they are all elephants! The book is thus an early introduction to a very important idea in the arts — the idea of representation. Through a series of activities — colouring, patterning, tracing, decorating and creating their own elephant — children come to understand the role of the imagination in representing the real. They realise that art is as much about their version of what they see and how they represent that, as it is about what they actually see. concept: paola FErrarotti illustration: Various artists
For the art educator, each of the 8 styles offers a unique context to think about the relationship between a particular art activity and the learning it fosters and enables.
here is a list of things that educators who have worked with the book noticed: • All children, from the youngest (usually 3+) to the oldest (8+) are fascinated by and love the elephant. This helps them take to colouring or patterning or even tracing the grey outlines on the page with affection. The outline acts both as a holding line, as well as one that encourages the child to begin work on a picture. • Younger children are likely to start with images that comprise simple outlines, and which contain plenty of blank space. Many of them begin to colour vigorously and the results are often startling and dramatic. Older children use colour just as happily — for many of them, integrating colour patches with patterns can prove challenging and exciting. This is a skill demanded of many Indian indigenous artists — often colour has to be melded into images that are executed using very fine lines and dots. • Patterning is popular with older children. Children copy patterns that are there in the book, as well as create their own. Patterning also nurtures quiet enjoyment — children relish the control that they learn to exercise over their hand, even as they invent their own imaginative patterns. Interestingly, in most Indian art traditions, younger artists are
put to work ‘filling’ blank spaces with fine lines, decorations and so on, before they learn to compose an entire picture on their own. This is the case with those who train in the Mithila and Mata-Ni-Pachedi art styles that feature in this book. • Talking and asking questions help to guide some children into doing — for example, a lively discussion on what elephants eat led to the beast’s large belly filled with shapes of leaves, stalks, nuts and fruits! The connection between talking and drawing is an interesting one, and can lead to the most unexpected results in the doing. • Some children also draw more easily when they have a story to tell: this becomes useful when children want to not merely trace, pattern or fill, but add to the composition. The elements to be added emerge naturally as it were, when a child places the image on the page into a story she has made up. There are many traditions of narrative art in India, which work on the same principle: Patua art (featured in the book) is a good example of art that tells stories. Patua artists compose narrative pictures, and string them together with words that originally were songs.
Explore the boy who speaks in numbers
The Boy Who Speaks in Numbers is a darkly satiric account of childhood in times of war. Set in Sri Lanka, the events it narrates could equally happen elsewhere — in all places where human deaths are reduced to numbers and guns do not differentiate between adults and children. The book can be well used to initiate discussions on the horror as well as pity of war, the plight of civilians caught between warring groups, and most important the cruel fate that awaits young people separated from their families and loved ones.
author: Mike Masilamani illustrator: Matthew frame
To ease the reader into a text that is disturbing as well as deeply humane, a set of planned activities can prove useful. Adults working with young people, including educators in community forums, student groups and in the classroom may do the following:
Talk About
Activity
• War and conflict in contemporary times, and encourage young people to review world news over the last month and identify areas of current conflict — in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. Ask them to address the following questions: a ) Is the conflict within countries or between two countries? b) Is it clear who is fighting whom? c ) What reasons are offered for the conflicts having erupted. d ) Are there people or groups in any of these countries or places that are opposed to war?
Once readers are familiar with the book, you can offer them a set of exercises that will help them grasp its content better.
• Images of war, including photographs, video footage, illustrations and art. Get them to ask questions about images to do with war and violence: which images speak to us? Which images make us turn away? Are there images that are unusual and which tell us things we don’t usually connect with war? If so, what are they? • T he conflict in Sri Lanka, especially who is fighting whom and how it all started and ended. Follow this up with a discussion on writings about conflict, especially those featuring young people and children. • The Diary of Anne Frank — which some young people are likely to have read — and on what children experience and how they express their fear or anxiety or happiness in such situations.
• M ake a list of all the phrases used in the book to describe and assign roles to the many characters, such as Constantly Complaining Cow, Important Aunty, Mad Uncle and so on. Why has the author used these names rather than actual ones? Are there other books where authors have done this? What effect is created or achieved by this way of naming characters? • C ompile all references to numbers in the book, and discuss what they tell us about war, violence and death. • D oes the novel make evident who is fighting whom? Identify sentences and paragraphs that refer to different sides in the war — and discuss what distinguishes one from the other.
• T he illustrations in the novel and get children to ‘read’ these images; never mind if they have not read the novel.
• I dentify 5 features of life in refugee camps as described in the novel. Go on to read the UN Convention on refugee rights and discuss what rights are being respected / violated.
• The Boy Who Speaks in Numbers as a book about conflict viewed through the eyes of a child with autism, or a child that is differently abled. Why has the author chosen to make such a child his chief character? Does a differently abled child see things that many of us fail to notice? If so, what could these be, in a situation of war and violence?
Look over the use of illustrations in the book: if you are to illustrate the book, which sections would you choose to illustrate and why?
Explore Tree Matters
The Bhil people of central India are among the country’s oldest indigenous communities. They have an intimate and playful relationship with the natural world of plants, animals, tees and forests. To them, these are spaces that sustain them — they work, play and offer worship to their gods in this environment. Therefore, their sense of the natural world is deeply intuitive — they possess a wisdom that comes out of everyday interaction and dependence on this world.
text: Gita Wolf and V. Geetha illustration: Gangu bai
Tree Matters is an introduction to this ecological wisdom, brought alive through vivid art and lively description. It may be used in a range of ways: in middle-school classroom discussions on the environment and the many ways of relating to it; as a model for thinking about human relationship to trees; and as a context for learning about art that is closely linked to everyday life as well as the imagination.
Talk About
Activity
• The term ‘indigenous’ people; who are they and why do we call them that. Focus discussions on what does it mean to be the ‘oldest’ inhabitants of a place — does it make for a special relationship with and understanding of the natural world?
• E ncourage students to take a walk around the neighbourhood of their school or homes, accompanied by either an adult who knows about trees or older children that do. Ask them to take a tree ‘census’ — the number of trees on the road, their names, the most popular trees in people’s homes and their names etc.
• The setting for this book: is it set in the present or the past? Is it about how things are now, or about how things were? Point to how indigenous communities have to negotiate their memory of a different way of living in a context where they cannot quite live that way anymore, but still find it valuable to refer to it. It may also be that some of them still try to live that way, even while accommodating to the future. Identify sections of the text that help you anchor this discussion as well draw on examples from other parts of the world, including the choices that confront the Masai in Kenya and certain forest communities in the Amazon region in Brazil. • T he difference between ‘lived’ ecological knowledge and ‘learnt’ ecological knowledge — drawing on examples from the book. • The importance of beliefs about forest spirits for those who live close to the natural world — what do these stories and beliefs tell us about the way people relate to the forest? • T he art and what it does for the reader: how does it communicate across space and culture? Is it through its use of colours and simplified shapes, both of the natural world and human beings?
• O nce this is done, ask them to find out more about specific trees: are they native to the landscape? Do they yield edible trees or fruits? Are there other uses for these trees? • S uggest that they draw trees they find attractive; once they do, ask them if drawing a tree helped them understand things about it that are not evident when they are only looking at it or photographing it. • G et children to make a list of things from their daily diet that come off trees: encourage them to start a classroom discussion or a group discussion on when and if children today pluck and eat things straight off trees and plants: if so, where is that still possible? • A sk children to form groups of 3-4 students. Each group can then be asked to identify a poem, a short story and painting on the different ways that human communities across the world relate to trees. Get groups to make presentations on their collection. • G et children to read the section, ‘Trees for Every Occasion’ from the book. Can they think or imagine specific uses for the trees that they see around them?