CBA2024: The Fastest Tortoise in Town

‘The Fastest Tortoise in Town’ is a wonderful story! Barbara Hendricks, a tortoise, has been entered into a Fun Run by her owner-and best friend- Lorraine. Convinced that she has no chance of winning, Barbara Hendricks is less enthusiastic for the venture than Lorraine, but with encouragement and support, she finds the courage to try!

There is so much to explore in the story. In addition to conversations about taking part, doing your best and the normality of worrying about things like this, children are sure to enjoy finding out about all the animals which take part in the race. The humorous ending makes the link to the fable of ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’ which there are many re-tellings of including one illustrated by Brian Wildsmith (OUP ISBN: 978-0192727084) and one by Helen Ward (Templar ISBN: 978-1787419414).

The illustrations are just fabulous with so much to notice and enjoy on each page. The range of changing expressions on Barbara Hendricks’ face as she goes through a whole gamut of emotions is just wonderful! These pictures are sure to inspire children to draw and this can be put to good use in creating a little game based on the book!

Children love playing with magnets and this game offers a wealth of possibilities for investigating their properties, creating ‘fair tests’, working scientifically…but this magnetic race game can just be played and enjoyed for the pure fun of it!

On a piece of thin cardboard (from a cereal packet or similar), draw a race track. This can be whatever size you like, but allowing enough room for all the players will be important. Although there are six creatures racing in the story, it would be better to have perhaps three players at a time and race in heats!

Next, make your playing pieces to represent the animals in the race. We have used match boxes for this, but flat pieces of card will do just as well. To the bottom of each piece, attach a paperclip. Now, each player can select a piece and a magnet. Place the pieces on the board at the start line an each player needs to hold their magnet underneath the board. On the start command, each player moves their magnet forwards, taking their piece with it. The winner is the one who crosses the finish line first.

You might need to do a little experimenting with the available magnets to find out how best to use this with children. Some magnets are strong enough to work through table tops whilst others are not and so the board will need to be either held up by others while playing or be raised in some way- small piles of books, for example. I used small strips of magnetic tape inside the bottom edge of the matchboxes which worked very well. Experiment - and have fun!

The Fastest Tortoise in Town

Howard Calvert, illustrated by Karen Obuhanych

Walker ISBN: 978-1529501506

CBA2024: The Princess and the (Greedy) Pea

‘The Princess and the (Greedy) Pea’ by Leigh Hodgkinson is one of the four fabulous titles shortlisted for the 2024 Children’s Book Awards Books in the Younger Children Category. It is a wonderfully playful cautionary tale which uses the cumulative format of ‘There was an old woman who swallowed a fly…’ to retell the story of ‘The Princess and the Pea’-with a twist! Beautifully illustrated, it is a complete delight- one of those books which appeals as much to an adult sharing the story as to the children enjoying it!

There are so many ways in which this lovely book could be used as the starting point for further fun! If children aren’t familiar with ‘There was an old woman…’ or the ‘Princess and the Pea’, there is a lovely retelling of the Old Woman illustrated by Pam Adams (Child's Play International Ltd ISBN: 978-0859537278) and there are a number of retellings of ‘The Princess and the Pea’, including one by Rachel Isadora (Puffin ISBN: ‎ 978-0142413937), Lauren Child (Puffin ISBN: 978-0141500140) and Mini Grey (Red Fox ISBN: 978-0099432333) which considers things from the pea’s point of view.

It’s always fun to play a game, however, so we have created ‘Feed the Pea’ which can be adapted to suit players of all ages! All you need is card, coloured paints or pens, scissors and paper. You need to decide on the size which you would like your game to be. This is a table top version, but it can be as big as you like!

First, decide on the size you would like your game to be and cut a piece of card for the back board. This will need to have a hole cut into it later for the pea’s mouth- but don’t do this yet!

Next, draw round something round to create a Pea which will fill the backboard. Cut out this circle and then draw round another circle inside this one to create the mouth. Carefully cut this out, leaving a hole (NB: The pea could be drawn/painted onto the actual backboard). Draw round two white circles, two smaller green circles and finally two little black circles and then stick these together to form the eyes (see below!). Stick these onto the pea, add a nose and then draw round two circles in green for the cheeks.

Now, mount your pea onto the back board and cut out the mouth-hole. The card for this needs to be fairly stiff to make sure Pea stands up. Once mounted, you need to create a stand to support Pea. This can be done in a variety of ways which need to be adapted depending on the size of your pea. One method is shown below.

Scrunch up different coloured pieces of paper to represent the different foods which Pea eats in the book- green for the Brussels sprout, red for the soup, brown for the bread and so on… The object of the game is to get a piece of each food through Pea’s open mouth. Points can be scored for each piece which makes it through. For the smaller game, pieces will need to be flicked whereas larger games can have things thrown or if you chose to use small balls, kicked through the mouth. Children will enjoy creating rules and adapting the game to suit them!

Have fun!

The Princess and the (greedy) Pea

Leigh Hodgkinson

Walker ISBN: 978-1529503005

The Children’s Book Awards

Over the past year, children from our member schools have been taking part in voting for the Children’s Book Awards. Books from each of the three categories- Books for Younger Children, Books for Younger Readers and Books for Older Readers- are distributed so that our young readers can choose and share their opinion about a wealth of wonderful books, sent by publishers, voting on each on they read. This is the first stage of the testing process from which the top 10 books are selected and takes place over the whole year, with new books constantly being fed into schools as they arrive.

Once this stage is complete, the ‘Top 50 Pick of the Year’ are identified and from this, the magic Top 10 emerges! Children can then be involved in voting on one- or more- of the categories, ranking the books once they have read all those in a category to cast their votes for the awards. At each step of the process, it is the children’s votes that count, resulting in an award which actually gives voice to young readers!

Every year, children love being involved and take voting very seriously. They love discussing the books with their peers, often resulting in some very heated conversations, and feeling that their opinion matters. They really value having access to such a wonderful range of up-to-date titles and feel that it encourages them to try books which they might not otherwise have discovered. Here are some of their thoughts on being invloved!

E.S - I really liked taking part in this category. I loved the range of books and I felt an urgency to get them all read and chatting about them with other in my class that also read them. My favourite book was Dread Wood. I loved the mystery and found it quite scary in places.

L.L- It’s so exciting when new books appear and we are allowed to choose whatever we like. When the Top 10 are revealed, it’s brilliant when something you really liked has made it to that stage!

L.F - After we had read all of the books, we could then chat about what had happened - we were all very good to not give any spoilers and ruin it for others, but it was great chatting about what had happened in each story. 

R.W- It’s great fun taking part in this award. I really enjoy hearing about what other members of the class are reading and deciding whether I might like to try it.

A.L - I liked reading through the books and thinking about which other children in my class/ group would like the book and who to recommend it to. 

P.T- It’s sometimes hard to choose what to read first as I want to read everything! I think it’s really important that we are allowed to vote and say what we think about the books. Instead of teachers telling us what we should read, we can learn from each other!

On Saturday, we will discover who the winners are at the CBA ceremony, which is always the loveliest occasion. I have been lucky enough to attend quite a few of these over the years- with and without children- and it is always an absolute joy.