PHILIP GIBSON – KONGPHAT LUANGRATH – ALL ABOUT ANIMALS – NOVEMBER
26, 2015
We have to start with the
positive sides first, and there are many.
Each animal is presented with a
text first and illustrations second. The text is informative and the illustrations
are visually accurate. The children then can enter that first layer of the book
easily and safely. The information is most of the time accurate, at least for
urban users. It’s quite obvious the author has never worked on a farm. Cows may
look placid, but they may be very dangerous. A 15 year old teenager was killed
recently in a village next to mine by a cow who kicked him with both its hind legs
against a wall. He did what I was told never to do when I was his age and
worked on farms: he managed to get himself trapped between a cow’s rump and a
wall and the cow reacted as if she were menaced (the best defense is to attack).
I was told that when dealing with cows we had to have a stick about four or
five feet long, not to beat the cows but to keep a safe distance between them
and me: the safe distance that a back kick could not bridge, and of course I
was told to never get myself trapped between the rump of a cow and a wall.
Peaceful? Indeed, and you should see a stampeding herd of even only ten or
twelve cows to know they are not that peaceful, and you better not find
yourself on their way.
But for urban users this book is
fine. The list of animals concerned is varied and the descriptions are rather
clear. For children that are about ten years old, I think though the author
could have used the concept of mammal which is not used and then whales and
dolphins are mammals. The fact is explained differently; like the necessity to
breathe air (what about turtles?) or the necessity for the mother to feed her cubs
with her milk, but the concept itself, the word, is quite clear and could have
been useful.
As a jumping or diving board for
class work this book is good. It will open a few doors and then with the
Internet in the class on tablets or computers the children could find a lot
more, like the fact that African elephants are diurnal whereas Asian elephants
are nocturnal.
The second layer of the book is
also interesting. It sets up dialogues between two people, either two young
pupils discussing, and mostly repeating, what has been said in the
presentations, or one pupil and his or her mother or father. Why only two?
Because these dialogues go beyond the simple information about animals and try
to build some social education like the relations between brother and sister,
the authority of parents, the advisory power and role of the parents, etc.
Personally I think these dialogues should have concentrated more on the data
about animals and widened the information. But this second layer should be the
model of an activity in class. Pairs or triplets of students should be assigned
the mission to get more information about one animal and to present a live
dialogue or scene discussing the information and data they would have found
with open questions leading to various points of view assumed and presented by
the pupils. It is by being active that the students will really integrate the
information:
1-
active in looking for more data;
2-
active in building a dialogue or scene debating
some questions;
3-
active in presenting these dialogues and scenes
live.
The third layer of each
presentation opens up on a set of (mostly seven) questions, but most of the
time it is only checking if some data has been assimilated. Rare are the
questions – but there are a few – that actually ask the pupils to explain what
they think and how they feel about an issue. It is these questions that should
be the very core of the dialogues and scenes the students should be asked to
build. For example why we should not kill wild animals, elephants, tigers,
whales, etc.
As a springboard or a trampoline this book is interesting but then the parents
(???) and teachers should use it for the students to amplify the data and to
make the students become active, productive and not only receptive. There then
should be somewhere, and not in the book, a teacher’s guide or adult user’s
methodological booklet explaining all you can do with the book when associated
with the internet. The book should not be a book but a Kindle ebook with next
to it the Internet access window and several sites with information on the
various animals for the children to check and enrich their knowledge. The
children could even be suggested to produce their own chapter with the
information they could find and with illustrations downloaded from the
Internet. Some may even think of ironical, satirical or humoristic
presentations.
The few grammatical or syntactic
remarks at the end are not always accurate. The note on “Gerunds” gives
examples of no gerund at all. A gerund needs an “agent” in the possessive case
and a direct object like in: “I love my mother’s cooking brownies.” If there is no agent at all or an “agent” in
the object case it is a present participle (with of course all complements
built verbally since the present participle is a full verbal though non-finite form.
If there is no agent, or an “agent” in the possessive case and what could have
been a direct object but is a nominal
complement introduced by the preposition “of” we have a real and full noun that
could be an –ing verbal form but could also be any other noun derived from a
verb like in “I watched the departure of the train” which is similar to “I
watched the hunting of the rat” or “ I watched the rat hunt” on the model of “a
witch hunt” and we could even have “the ratshunt” on the model of “a manshunt”
This is a lot more important than
it may look. If we have a present participle or a gerund we can have an adverb
though in different positions. Otherwise we use an adjective:
1-
Present participle: “Yesterday night I liked
Paul dramatically reading Hamlet in
the street” (Action);
2-
“Yesterday night I liked Paul’s reading Hamlet in the street dramatically” (Action);
3-
“Yesterday night I liked Paul’s dramatic reading
of Hamlet in the street, which
amplified the dramatic reading of Hamlet he presented in his afternoon lecture
in class.” (Interpretation, two meanings).
But once again this book may, can
and should be a very good launching pad for an interesting set of activities a
teacher could build in his class with his pupils. Up to 10 years of age or so.
Beyond would require a lot more biology.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 5:22 AM