Picture Book Month Day 16

Scary Bird

Scary Bird is a book you can just read for enjoyment or with older readers, and in a school or library context, you might ask questions.  Why ask questions?

The Picture Book Teacher:

This is what asking questions can do for a reader:

• Asking questions allow readers to understand why they are reading the text.
• Asking questions give readers a chance to make predictions and then later change their thinking.
• Asking questions allow readers to make connections based on things they already know (their schema).
• Asking questions give the reader a chance to use context clues to identify unfamiliar words.
• Asking questions allow the reader to decide if the content/story was good or not.
• Asking questions give the reader a chance to review important information from the text.
• Asking questions give the reader a chance to clarify any information they may not understand.

In my school library children know that I will ask questions before we read a text - looking for story clues in the title, cover art, blurb, end papers and title page etc. We might also think about other books that could be similar to our new book. I try not too ask too many questions while reading a story - this can happen on a second reading perhaps but after reading the book, especially with one like Scary Bird, questions can promote deeper thinking:

After reading a text/story students can ask questions that they still might be wondering about, some examples might include:

• why a character did something
• feelings about the outcome of the problem
• why something happened the way it did
• why the author ended the story that way

Here are another set of similar questions (thanks to my friend from Kinderbookswitheverything) - don't use all of them - they are just suggestions:

• What did you like about this story?
• Which character would you like to be? Why?
• What made this book special?
• Do you think this book has the right title? Why or why not?
• If you were the author would this story end this way? Why or why not?
• What is the problem in this story? How is it solved?
• What do you think the author wants us to think about?
• Why did the author write this book?
• What do you think is the big idea that the author wants us to know?

Michel Streich was born in Germany, lived in London and came to Australia in 2000. He makes these comments about his book Scary Bird: The story of Scary Bird in part has its origins in my own experiences – I migrated first to England, then to Australia. And there are stories of migration all through my family – stories of people happily looking for adventure, and stories of people having to flee their homes. I’ve always found it perplexing that xenophobia exists in Australia, a country where most people were either born overseas, or have at least one parent born overseas. 20% of Australians speak a language other than English at home. 3% of the population are indigenous Australians – the rest are either migrants, or are descended from migrants.