The action is driven by the father, who is the only one in this family who thinks a trip to the zoo would be fun. We are shown this in the car, when the father is the only one to laugh at his own joke. Browne, in turn, makes this into a joke for the reader by saying ‘everyone laughed except’ (everyone else in the car). This solipsistic father has no empathy for the desires of the rest of his family. Instead, the boy realises that zoos are not fun, which is just the first step towards full awareness of humans’ relationship to animals, and how far humans have become removed from our natural environments, of small communities, of ready access to nature, and everything that goes with that. Zoo by Anthony Browne is a story about a family’s trip to the zoo with an underlying theme that becomes evident throughout the story as it progresses. Browne is known for his animal protagonists. “The apes I write about are people in all but appearance,” he says.

The book ends with the main character ‘Me’ saying, ��That night I had a strange dream. Do you think animals have dreams?’ This is a great question to start a discussion with the class and also it could be used in Literacy with the words being omitted from the story and the Children using the illustrations as inspiration for their own text for the story. When he finished school Browne intended to become a painter, but being short of money he took a job as a medical illustrator, producing detailed paintings of operations for Manchester Royal Infirmary. After three years he grew tired of the job's repetitiveness and moved on to design greeting cards for Gordon Fraser. He designed cards for five years before he started writing and illustrating his own books. The kids fought, more interested in lunch and souvenirs than the animals, found their daddy embarrassing, and didn't bother to laugh at the daddy's attempted jokes. The family's dynamic feels troubling, but so blatantly true at the same time. The ending makes us pause and think about the relationship between animals and human beings, and the ethical questions surrounding a zoo environment. Find out the cost of entry for a zoo near you. Can you use the price list to make up some word problems? Developing Thinking Across the Curriculum (book & DVD – BBC Wales/Estyn/Welsh Assembly Government, 2006)

The mother in this book functions as an art critic for both her family and the reader. She is shown to be aware of art history, encourages the children to establish a personal connection with the artworks, and teaches them to look for symbolic clues in works such as Augustus Egg’s Past and Present No. 1 and John Everett Millais’s The Boyhood of Raleigh. The first picture in particular is reminiscent of the symbolism of imprisonment in Zoo, a link that the reader is spurred to explore when the mother asks, “Does it remind you of a family we know?” Together they work out, for example, that the bracelets of the fallen woman in the painting look like handcuffs and that the mirror opens “a door showing that the mother will have to leave the home.” The symbols of imprisonment resonate with the mother’s depiction in Zoo. However, in The Shape Game the mother’s remark does not lead the children to draw the link with their own lives, possibly because they cannot imagine their mother as a fallen woman. Moreover, whereas they were depicted as a “broken” family in Zoo, in terms of psychological rather than physical distance or adultery, it is suggested that they are more of a unit in The Shape Game and that is largely due to the mother’s efforts. Zoos often have signs that give information about the animals kept there. Could you make a poster to teach people about an animal kept in a zoo? Me and You (Doubleday, 2011) —a retelling of The Story of the Three Bears in a contemporary setting Here are a few suggestions of ways you and your pupils can breathe new life into some favourite picture books: But Why? Developing philosophical thinking in the classroom by Sara Stanley with Steve Bowkett (Network Educational Press, 2004)

Dad makes a joke about ‘jam’. Can you think of other words that have more than one meaning? Think is called a homonym. Could you make a poster with lots of examples of them? Pig That Wants To Be Eaten, The (and ninety-nine other thought experiments) by Julian Baggini (Granta, 2005)

Explore the shape game

In assessing gender stereotyping in secondary characters, we must be aware of the narrative perspective of the text. In [Astrid Lindgren’s] Karlson on the Roof, the mother can be very easily perceived as a stereotype, since she is only portrayed in stereotypical situations: baking cinnamon rolls and making hot chocolate drinks for her son, bandaging his wound after a fight, comforting and caring. However, the narrative is focalized through the young protagonist, and the portrait of the mother is his image of a perfect parent….Indeed, we do not know what else Midge’s mother does beside [sic] baking rolls, since it is irrelevant for the focalizing character. (Nikolajeva, 2002, p. 115) Eccleshare, Julia (28 July 2000). "Portrait of the artist as a gorilla. Interview: Anthony Browne". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 7 January 2008 . Retrieved 26 December 2007. Browne's debut book both as writer and as illustrator was Through the Magic Mirror, published by Hamish Hamilton in 1976. A Walk in the Park followed next year and gained a cult following [ citation needed] and Bear Hunt (1979) was more successful commercially. [9] His breakthrough came with Gorilla, published by Julia MacRae in 1983, based on one of his greeting cards. For it he won the Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject. [10] Collect dream-elements and categorise your material. Is it possible to use a single image or symbol to represent a category? For example, a fire to represent anger, or wings to represent flight.

Create a quiz with questions such as ‘What’s your favourite food?’ and ‘What are you frightened of?’ to help you find out more about your character before drawing it.Take Voices in the Park, for example, in which four narrators offer different perspectives on the same event, or Changes, in which a child’s sense of unease about his family is revealed by the way that household objects are transformed. These books grab our attention by drawing us into detailed and unsettling worlds that are quite simply impossible to ignore, and make a rewarding starting point for discussion and creative work with older children, as well as younger ones. Discover the detail