Spoon is a wonderful picture book for all ages. It has humour, pathos and a very satisfying emotional arc. Spoon is having doubts about his worth. He comes from a large family filled with spoons of all sizes and shapes. Today I took along some odd spoons to share with my reading group and they especially like the shell shaped spoon - there is one in this story.
One boy thought this spoon would be useful as a clay mold. Before we started reading we talked about spoons in stories and within minutes every child recalled the famous rhyme "and the dish ran away with the spoon!" How perfect because this also gets a mention in the story of Spoon. The back cover (seen above) also gave us some good hints about what might happen in this book. We probably should have spent more time talking about facial expressions.
All is not well with spoon. He is felling a little blue (sitting beside a bowl of blueberries) and his mother notices he looks out of shape. Spoon has begun to compare his purpose with the others who live in the cutlery drawer - knife and fork. Knife can cut and Fork never goes stir crazy. What Spoon doesn't know is that Knife and Fork think Spoon is the lucky one.
Spoon can play silly games like bashing pots, spoon is used for measuring and best of all spoon can dive into dishes of ice cream. My favourite illustration is when we see spoon relaxing in a hot cup of tea and chatting to a tea bag!
Early in the book make sure you notice poor little spork (in Australia we call this a splade) who is pictured with the extended family of spoons but standing slightly to the side with a sad face.
I found a picture book about Spork (by a different author) perhaps we should read that as our next book.
Amy Krouse Rosenthal also has a book called Chopstick.
Spoon is absolutely a ten out of ten book. It is a delight to read aloud and offers plenty of scope for discussion. If you haven't seen Spoon take a look at this video. You can see other books illustrated by Scott Magoon here and you can see all of Amy's books here. Sadly Amy died in 2017.
As I mentioned I am working as a volunteer with a group of Grade Two children who are part of a remedial reading group. The idea is to read these eight children a picture book or two each week. So far every book has been a winner which is a bit of a surprise to me!
List of books read so far:
Pog by Lyn Lee
The Lollipop Tree by Cherney Berg
Spoon by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
A bike like Sergio's by Maribeth Boelts
One is for one by Nadia Wheatley - this one has been the most popular!
Press Here by Herve Tullet
Crazy Hair Day by Barney Saltzberg
Smelly Socks by Robert Munsch
Billy's Bucket by Kes Gray
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