Saturday, November 27, 2021

Picture Book Month Day 27

 


I'm sharing another old and sadly out of print book today - Little Big Feet by Ingrid and Dieter Schubert. This book was first published in 1986.

Ingrid and Dieter Schubert are a husband and wife team. They are the creators of many award-winning picture books for children. The Schuberts were both born and raised in Germany before moving to the Netherlands. Their first effort, There’s a Crocodile Under my Bed! in 1980 was an immediate success and was published in 14 countries. Today their many books for children are available in 22 languages.


The Dutch title of Little Big Feet is Platvoetje and the German title is Irma hat so große Füße.

Here are the opening lines:

"Halfway between earth and sky the witches live. Usually they spend their time quietly practising spells and feeding their cats, but today there was pandemonium. The littlest witch of all had disappeared."

If I was reading this book to a child or to a group of children I would stop at this point. It would be fun to ask all of the children to stand up and make heaps of noise - pandemonium!  Then, after we all calm down, it's time to predict what might have happened to the littlest witch.  Perhaps the from cover can give some clues? And what about the title? Could this link to her reason for running away? 

There is a terrific story idea here when we read that the little witch needs to use a toothbrush as her broomstick. 

There are such gentle messages in this book about accepting ourselves and our differences. Little Big Feet has been teased for her big feet and Maggie has been told she has big ears.



I am going to spoil the ending and show you the rebus letter the little witch sends back to her new friend Maggie (or Irma as she is called in Germany). I love the way the illustration includes all the fold lines.



Here is another book by Ingrid and Dieter Schubert.  Janis Ian wrote a children's song about a tiny mouse and the Schuberts turned it into a picture book:




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