Pistes d'exploration

Read the book vertically from start to finish and then back again. Discuss the author’s strategy and why it works. Which story do you prefer?

Create an alien journey! With a long piece of black construction paper and a white pencil crayon, draw a line starting on the left and zoom along to the other side (see pages 7 and 8). Add words and drawings to illustrate your own journey.

Generate a list of children’s books, movies, or television shows about aliens. Discuss what these all have in common. 

Look at the pictures starting from one end of the book. Discuss what you see. Now start at the other end of the book and discuss what you see. What are the differences? What is this story about? Read the introductions at both ends of the book to find out. Were you right?

Use a dictionary and make a class list of the featured vocabulary. Use these words to retell the two stories.

On a poster, illustrate a two-way story about your journey from one place to another. Write some words on the poster to help tell your story.

Duck! Rabbit!

Mots-clés

Picture book , circular story , journeys , oceans , outer space , space travel , travel

Commentaire descriptif

Start at one end of the book and you’re deep underwater, following a sea creature along a bright yellow trail leading upward into outer space. Or begin from the other end, on a distant planet, and follow an alien life form as it floats down, down, down toward the ocean floor. This interactive picture book appears simple, but each page offers readers an eye-catching layout of text and image – a snapshot in time – as they follow the journey of the traveller. The two-page vertical spreads consist of single words or short phrases such as “A boot” or “Good afternoon” or “The moon is a balloon,” and crisp, bright-coloured graphics with a predominance of yellow against a Wedgwood blue or black background. Not so much a realistic, cohesive story as a call to the interpretative table, this original open-ended read-aloud offers plenty of futuristic images and scenes for readers to contemplate. In the classroom, it could be a valuable source of inspiration for students’ own artwork, and for stories based on imagined journeys into the unknown.