B O O K P U B L I S H E R S Teachers Notes (Primary) by Robyn Sheahan-Bright Brian Banana Duck Sunshine Yellow Chris McKimmie ISBN 1741147417 Recommended for ages 4+ These notes may be reproduced free of charge for use and study within schools but they may not be reproduced (either in whole or in part) and offered for commercial sale. Introduction... 2 Story summary... 2 Themes... 2 Curriculum topics... 2 Study of history, society and environment... 3 Visual literacy... 4 English language and literacy... 5 Creative arts... 6 Learning technologies... 7 Mathematics... 7 Blackline masters... 8 Conclusion... 12 About the writers... 12 83 Alexander Street PO Box 8500 Crows Nest, Sydney St Leonards NSW 2065 NSW 1590 ph: (61 2) 8425 0100 info@allenandunwin.com Allen & Unwin PTY LTD Australia Australia fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 www.allenandunwin.com ABN 79 003 994 278
INTRODUCTION This picture book is a celebration of the child s search for identity. It s about the desire to stand out from a crowd, but also the need to belong. It s about the power of words and names to give us a personality and a place in the world. It s about relationships with family. It s about individuality and the importance of imagination in the development of the individual persona. It s about the capacity for art to express feelings. It s a quirky, totally original, visual poem to the child s innate celebration of all that is creative in the human heart. STORY SUMMARY Brian goes to Nana and Grumpy s every weekend. Nan calls him Banana and Grumpy calls him Duck. Brian likes to explore the world and to see it through his own eyes, which sometimes creates problems for him, and for those who care for him. But that s what life s like. If you don t go outside your own territory sometimes, you end up not seeing yellow, but seeing grey and white and black instead. Brian believes in ducks, and he believes in yellow. So he imagines a footy team called the Ducks and he sees a Big Duck and takes it home with him. This isn t strange, not really. After all, wasn t Brian rescued at the supermarket by a Big Prawn? The world is often stranger than anything our imaginations could ever dream up. That s what makes living such a stimulus to the imagination. If we care to open our eyes and look around, we ll see all sorts of strange and wonderful things Brian does, why can t we? THEMES There are several key ideas or themes which flow through this work: Identity Belonging Imagination Family Individuality Consumerism These themes could be considered in conjunction with the following topics of relevance to school curriculum areas. CURRICULUM TOPICS 1. Study of history, society and environment 2. Visual literacy 3. English language and literacy 4. Creative arts 5. Learning technologies 6. Mathematics - 2 -
The notes which follow are designed to be used largely in pre-school and lower primary classrooms, although some activities might be useful for upper primary or even secondary students. Teachers should be able to adapt them to suit the demands of their particular curriculum needs. STUDY OF HISTORY, SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT This book encourages children to regard the people and the world around them with fresh eyes. It depicts a consumerist society and Chris McKimmie s images contain several references to aspects of contemporary popular culture which might be discussed and/or explored in art and craft activities with students. 1) Family. The book raises a number of questions about families. The idea of what makes a family and how we spend our time together might be explored in conjunction with it. Questions: Brian spends his weekends with his grandparents. Where might his parents be? Maybe he hasn t got any parents? Is Brian an only child? What sort of people are Grumpy and Nana? What do the pictures of their home tell you about them? Activity: Children might like to discuss the things they do when they are with family members other than their parents or primary carers and write a story about it with an illustration to match. 2) Big Things are a particular theme in this book, eg. Big Prawn, Big Banana, Big Duck, Big Cow. Questions: How many big things have you seen? How many do you know about? Are there any in your local area? What big thing would you most like to see? Which one would you like to see built if it doesn t exist already? Why do we go to visit big things? Are there any other stories which include big things? See Australian Big Things http://www.bigthings.com.au/ and Wilkins Tourist Maps, http://www.wilmap.com.au/bigstuff/default.htm which contains a list of big things. Activity: Read about big things. Create a class mural depicting the favourite big thing of each student in the class. 3) Shopping malls and shopping. Discuss: Shopping and places where you shop. Activity: Have you ever been lost while shopping? What happened? Tell/write or draw this story. 4) Leisure Pursuits such as watching football on television. Questions: What are your favourite teams? What are your parents favourite teams? Or your grandparents? Discuss: Brian wants to barrack for a team called the Ducks. Discuss the names of football, soccer or basketball teams. - 3 -
Activity: Come up with some new names for your favourite sporting teams. Make them as crazy as you like. There is actually a hockey team called the Mighty Ducks at Anaheim US http://www.mightyducks.com/index.php Design a logo for your favourite team. Activity: Write a song to sing at a match in which the Ducks are playing. 5) The different environments in which we live might be discussed in relation to this book, in which scenes include: outdoors lake, sky, hill; and indoors home, shop. Questions: What do you see on a lake? What can you see from a hill? What things can you see in the sky? Activity: Make a list of all the things you can name in the shop where Brian gets lost. VISUAL LITERACY Every element of a picture book works to tell the story and to create a set of meanings which are understood by the reader in an overt manner, or more subtly via the sub-text. Several aspects of the art in this book might be discussed and explored in terms of visual literacy: 1) Colour yellow denotes a number of ideas in this book: sunshine, bananas, ducks, and sunflowers. Question: What other things does the colour yellow mean to you? What other yellow things are equally symbolic, eg. Bees? Activity: Choose one of these yellow things and draw it. For example, Kinderart <http://www.kinderart.com/drawing/sunflo.shtml>has a lesson plan on Drawing Sunflowers which could be used as the basis for this activity. It also refers students to famous works of sunflowers such as that done by Van Gogh. Children could make sunflowers by colouring and cutting from a template. Attach each sunflower to a piece of bamboo or rod. Decorate the classroom with a garden of sunflowers! Activity: Display your work in the classroom in a vibrant explosion of colour and image. 2) This is a concept book in which there are many objects and things to identify. Question: What objects can you identify in the pictures? For example, the opening page has shoes, a shirt, a duck standing on a sideboard, etc. 3) Iconography is used to create a sub-text throughout the book and contributes to it being a gaming text in which kids can identify many objects and jokes hidden in the illustrations eg. ducks are depicted in odd places such as salt and pepper shakers and a tea-pot shaped like ducks. Questions: Ask students to identify all the hidden references in the pictures starting with finding all the ducks or things shaped like ducks, and then bananas or sunflowers. 4) Imagery contains symbolism too. Activity: Choose an image or symbol and discuss its possible meanings. eg. Brian in a devil s suit. - 4 -
5) Medium. The pictures are done with acrylic paint on Mdf board and paper. Some are drawn on paper with ink. Activity: Examine other books which are illustrated in acrylic paint, or ink, and discuss the effect the medium has on the text. 6) Techniques & Perspective. The drawings are child-like and impressionistic, suggesting that they are Brian s view of the world rather than an adult one. Illustrator Chris McKimmie offers a child s eye view of the world. Activity: Compare a number of picture books which depict this sort of view of the adult world. Eg. Armin Greder and Libby Gleeson s Big Dog or Uncle David; Lauren Child s Clarice Bean books. Steinberger, Kevin. 'A matter of style: artistic style in picture book illustration' in The Literature Base Vol 23, Issue 1, February 2012. Includes suggested teaching activities. This book is cited as an example of naïve art on p.18. 7) Type Design. The typography is hand-lettered, again suggesting a child s view of the action. The imprint page (at the back of the book) tells us that book design, font design and lettering was done by the author Chris McKimmie; the text is set in a font called dylanandblake. Discuss: Font types and their effect on a book. Choose a number of books which use handlettered or unconventional-looking type eg. Fox by Margaret Wild, illustrated by Ron Brooks. Activity: Experiment with typefaces in writing stories on the computer. 8) Book Design. this book contains a back and front cover image, endpapers depicting the feet of the big duck, a dedication page, a title page, 16 double-page spreads, including a final imprint, or publications details, page. The juxtaposition of images and words on each page contributes to meaning in this and in other books. Even the endpapers are part of the meaning. Discuss: Design is important. Discuss the way each part of the book adds to its meaning. Activity: Map out a story of your own. Write a simple text about someone you know. Then create a story board. Read Libby Gleeson s Making Picture Books (2003) to give you ideas. Discuss: Illustrators enjoy playing with the book s format and design. Examine the back cover where the barcode and ISBN are depicted on a yellow plate with a knife and fork on either side as a joke. Some books are even more subversive in design and are not arranged in the traditional manner at all, eg, The Stinky Cheese Man by Lane Smith and Jon Scieszka. Discuss the jokes you discovered in Brian Banana Duck Sunshine Yellow. Then select a number of texts which have jokes on their covers or in their texts like this and invite students to find them. eg Gregory Rogers The Boy the Bear the Baron the Bard (2004); Frank Moffat s Dogs Do, Dogs Don t (2005). ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERACY This is a book which is about words as much as it is about pictures. It s about how children use words and learn a sense of control over their environment by naming things or identifying them. - 5 -
1) The naïve and impressionistic style is written as a child would put it. eg Na-na put on her face etc. Humour in the language here is subtle and understated, eg. I like it when we go to the lake and I swim with the other ducks. Activity: Write a description of Brian s first day at school as if he has written it. How would the teacher adjust if Brian arrived with his duck beak on, and said that he had five names? 2) Games with words are played here, as they are in the pictures. For example, Brian says his grandparents name is Yellow. Then he calls Nana Na-na which is an abbreviated word for banana. Grumpy is a version of Grampy or Grandad. These are the sorts of elisions children make all the time. They make up poetic phrases based on half understanding or hearing things, or because they simply like the sound of the words! Mastery of language is a skill gained from playing with words. This sort of intertextuality can be explored by comparing other books and how they contain hidden meanings, too. Activity: Select some poetry which works in this manner, and encourage kids to use their imaginations and write about family using made-up words. 3) Names and Naming. Brian has four other names with an association with yellow. Questions: Do your grandparents have a different name for you to the one your parents use? Have you got more than one name? Is there a nickname you hate? Or one you d like to have? What other book characters do you know with more than one name? eg Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge (1984) by Mem Fox and Julie Vivas. [See BLM 4 Acrostic poem] Discuss: Nicknames and why we use them. 4) This story includes events which may or may not have happened. There is a lot of imaginative play included in it. Activity: Write your own description/interpretation of what happens in this story. Activity: Share other stories which combine imagination and reality in this manner, eg. Nike Bourke and Stella Danalis s What the Sky Knows (2005) or Drac and the Gremlin (1988) by Alan Baillie and Jane Tanner. CREATIVE ARTS This text might encourage students to explore it through other forms of creative arts as well. 1) Masks and playacting are a topic to be explored here. Brian wears a duckbill mask throughout the text, and this mask also acts as camouflage when Brian is hiding amongst a lot of bananas; the bill looks just like the fruit. Activity: Use coloured cardboard to make a duck beak mask like Brian's. Imagine a whole room full of Brian's! Or make a mask using just one distinctive feature (horn, nose, eyes, ears) of your favourite animal. Activity: What does a mask do to your performance as an actor in a play? Act out a simple play in which you each wear a mask. How does this help to create a character? - 6 -
2) Music. Choose songs which include the word yellow. The Scarlet Pixel website http://www.scarletpixel.com/songs/yellow/index.html has a list of several popular songs such as Tie a Yellow Ribbon and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. The Beatles lyrics for the song Yellow Submarine are at http://www.lyricsdepot.com/the-beatles/yellow-submarine.html.donovan s Lyrics for the song Mellow Yellow are at. <http://www.lyricsdepot.com/donovan/mellow-yellow.html> Activity: Listen to some of these songs with the students and then make up your own simple rhymed song about Brian and the colour yellow. (Listening to the Wiggles songs might also give you some ideas.) LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES 1) Explore website links to related topics: Kiddyhouse com includes a page entitled All About Ducks by Maggie. It s a website for kids devoted to ducks, with information, charming graphics, stories and internet-based worksheets. http://www.kiddyhouse.com/farm/ducks.html Bananas in Pyjamas might be another possible link to explore. http://www.abc.net.au/children/bananas/default.htm Bananaland is a website devoted to the Australian banana with lots of activities for kids to explore including recipes and a map of where bananas are grown. The games on the site are free and could add to your class s enjoyment of this text, with simple activities such as filling in a dot-to-dot picture of a banana. http://www.bananaland.com.au/home.php Activity: Create your own Brian Banana s World website connected to the school website, using these notes as a guide for possible links, games, booklists and activities. This might encourage other schools to join you in celebrating Brian s wacky world. MATHEMATICS There are many objects to count in this book, which encourages the student to observe the world and find out the details of the things they see around them. Each page has a number to explore as a concept. Examine each page and you ll see: Cover: 1 bird 1 boy 1 cloud 1 plate 1 fork 1 knife 1 large flower; endpapers: 3 fence posts and 1 big duck; Title page: 9 birds. The text employs numbers too: on the back cover we read, On Saturday, I got lost. Twice. The second time, I found my own way home. And the numbers 1, 2, 3 appear on a couple of pages, as well. Questions: How many balloons are on the 7 th double-page spread following the title page? How many bees are on the 11th double-page spread? And for a real challenge, how many bananas are in the picture on the 5 th double-page spread? How many sunflowers can you find in the book? Activity: Investigate all the numbers and mathematics which are included in this text. - 7 -
BLM 1 I ve got a Lovely Bunch of Bananas Colour in this bunch of bananas. How many bananas can you see? (http://justinwilliams.ca/port/bananas.htm) - 8 -
BLM 2 Ducks & Drakes Some words have instant associations with others, eg ducks and drakes. Match these pairs of words which are jumbled. Then write in three more pairs of your own. Bananas sun yellow lame pie cry Mellow in the sky duck wolf Yellow submarine shine in Pyjamas??? - 9 -
BLM 3 Brian s Wordfind Find the words in the square. They are written in any order; they go across, down, in reverse, or diagonally. The words are: ducks, bananas, sunflowers, yellow, grumpy, Nana, big cow, prawn, Brian, balloon, wind, footy, sunshine, home. S S G R U M P Y A U Y H B N N N E O I R A S O F L M G I N H O O L E C A A I L O O O A N A N B N L T W W I N D E A Y A E B R R P D U C K S - 10 -
BLM 4 Brian s Acrostic Poem Write an acrostic poem about Brian. For advice on how to do this visit Giggle Poetry How to Write Acrostic Poems by Bruce Lansky: <http://www.gigglepoetry.com/poetryclass/acrostic.html> Brian R I A N B A N A N A D U C K S U N S H I N E Y E L L O W - 11 -
CONCLUSION This book offers a deliberately naïve and child-like view of the world, in which the child s ability to divorce him or herself from reality and become someone else is celebrated. It is a vibrant celebration of the colour yellow and of all things which are bright and beautiful! Brian Banana Duck Sunshine Yellow lives in all of us! ABOUT THE WRITERS CHRIS M C KIMMIE Chris McKimmie is the convenor and originator of the illustration program at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. He wrote, illustrated and designed a series of 8 children s books in the 70s, and has designed many covers for the University of Queensland Press. Represented in the Graphis Annual, he has worked as a graphic designer and publications designer for the ABC, the National Parks and Wildlife Services and the University of WA Press. He was production designer for the award-winning short film Stations and the feature-length film Australian Dream, and wrote the lyrics for the songs in both films. He exhibits paintings and drawings - most recently in a one-man show at Gallery 482 in Brisbane Dec 2003. To see more of his art and read more about him, go to his website at www.chrismckimmie.com Previous books by Chris McKimmie: apple to zoo Hicks Smith 1975 The painted bird Hicks Smith 1975 Two friends Hicks Smith 1975 One day Hicks Smith 1975 The shape I'm in Methuen 1977 One rainy day Methuen 1977 The caught bird Methuen 1977 The magic day Methuen 1977 D R ROBYN SHEAHAN-BRIGHT Dr Robyn Sheahan-Bright has operated justified text writing and publishing consultancy services since 1997, works for a number of publishers, and writes regularly for Magpies and the ABR. Her PhD from Griffith University (Gold Coast) was entitled To Market To Market: The Development of the Australian Children's Publishing Industry, and she has a Master of Letters in Children s Literature (Distinction) (UNE). She teaches writing for children and young adolescents at Griffith University, and on publishing and technology for USQ. From 2000-2003 she was a Member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council, and she has been Project Manager, Residential Editorial Program (REP) funded by the Literature Board and the publishing industry in 1999, 2004 and 2006. She is an Honorary Life Member of the Qld Writers Centre, of which she was founding director from 1991-1997, and has been a Director of Jam Roll Press (1987-94). Her latest publication is as co-editor with Stuart Glover of Hot Iron: Corrugated Sky: a Century of Queensland Writing (UQP and QWC, 2002) and Paper Empires: A History of the Book in Australia (1946-2004) co-edited with Craig Munro will be published by UQP in 2006. She contributed to the Cambridge Guide to Children s Books in English (edited by Victor Watson, CUP, 2001), Something to Crow About: Perspectives in Literature for Young People(edited by Sue Clancy, Charles Sturt University, 1999), Children s Literature Matters(edited by Robin Pope, ACLAR, 2001) and Crossing the Boundaries(edited by Geoff Bull and Michele Anstey, Pearson Education Australia, 2002). She is coordinating judge for the Penguin Somerset College National Novella Writing Competition for School Age Writers and a member of the Queensland Premier s Literary Awards judging panel. - 12 -