posted on 14 May 2024

Exploring Extraordinary Egypt with Year Three

I recently enjoyed sharing my collection of books with an Egyptian theme with enthusiastic Year Three children at Moor Green Primary Academy in Birmingham. Thanks to Oscar for helping me to set them out on display and to Boden who assisted me throughout, especially with showing the more unwieldy big books!

I included a range of illustrated information books, many of which encourage interaction and curiosity with liftable flaps and quizzes. I also recommended and gave a short synopsis of ones that have been reviewed on The Letterpress Project website: The Boy Who Stole the Pharaoh’s Lunch by Karen McCombie and Temira Burton and the Pharoah’s Treasure by Dawn Funnell .

Both classes were excited to see a story with favourite character ‘Flat Stanley and the Great Egyptian Grave Robbery’ by S. Pennypacker, created by Jeff Brown and ‘Let’s do the Pharoah’ by Jeremy Strong who is a very popular author.

As ever, it was the unusually designed books that got the most attention with many children leaning in for a closer look. Who could not be impressed by the triangular golden coloured ’Pyramids and Mummies’ by Anne Bolton or ‘Ancient Eygpt’, a thick board book cut out in the shape of an Egyptian pyramid published by Tango Books Ltd?

 They were intrigued by ‘Discovering Ancient Egypt’ published by Alligator Products Ltd. with pull out tabs and ‘Let’s look inside Pyramids’ created by Claude Delafosse and Gallimard Jeunesse, illustrated by Sabine Krawczyk with a press out paper torch to light up the pages, both of which Boden demonstrated very clearly. The ones that got the children really gasping with astonishment were: ‘Unwrap the Mummy’ featuring a magnificent metre high pop-up mummy by Ian Dicks and David Hawcock and ‘Amazing Pop-Up Pull -Out Mummy Book’ by David Hawcock with a 1.5 metre high pop-up!

We finished with the children deciding which range of adjectives best described their feelings about the range of books. I then asked them to choose one or more book covers to draw and left the books with them for a week to give them time to decide their favourites and to draw carefully.

See if you can match some of their pictures to the books in the photograph. The author Dawn Funnell was particularly delighted with those by Serena and Amelia and commented:

‘What a wonderful surprise. Please tell the children that I am glad that they enjoyed the book and thank them for the pictures.'

Children, parents and staff should be very impressed with the artistic results which you can see in the extensive eleven page gallery below. Please take a few minutes to appreciate their skills. I predict that some of these talented Year Three children might become the book illustrators of the future …

 

Karen Argent

May 2024