Chinese Year of the Snake

I was sent a link to a little film last week, from a librarian all the way across the water, in Bighorn Library, in the USA. 

I'll be honest, I hadn't realised that this year is Chinese Year of the Snake, but Rose Reid, the librarian in Bighorn, was on the ball. It was great that she selected Class Two at the Zoo as the perfect book to share with children, to celebrate (thank you Rose). 

When I'm doing school visits or festivals, I always enjoy reading Class Two at the Zoo - Julia Jarman's rhyming texts are so playful to read aloud and the children always roar with laughter. It was definitely one of my favourites to illustrate too. I had a lot of fun thinking up different ways for the anaconda to gobble up the various children and drawing the reactions of the various other animals in the zoo!

In her film, Rose demonstrates a very simple, but very effective workshop activity too: how to create your own anaconda puppet to go with the story.

Take a look, especially if you are a librarian after a way to do some work around the Year of the Snake theme. There are other snake activities on my website too: a step-by-step guide to drawing the  anaconda, a quiz to see how well you remember the story, an anaconda to colour in with your own pattern, plus a series of short films with lots of background information on how I create my books.

Have fun!