The fierce little woman and the wicked pirate by Joy Cowley and Miho Satake
The fierce little woman lived in a house at the end of a jetty. She knitted socks in blue and green wool to sell to sailors who had got their feet wet. But when there were no ships at her jetty, she was quite alone and lonely. Even though she had a trapdoor in her house that opened to the sea so she could swim in summer and fish in winter, she longed for the company of the summer sailors. Until, one stormy day, a pirate came to the house on the jetty. He stood on his toes, and starting tap-tap-tapping on the window.
Put Joy Cowley's name on a story for little people and I'm there....
When I started my initial teacher ed course in New Zealand in 1970, she was the leading author behind the Ready to Read series, a collection of basal readers that was used in junior classrooms in every school in New Zealand for reading instruction. In the 70s there would have been few Kiwi children who were unfamiliar with Early in the Morning, Grandma Comes to Stay and The Fire Engine, and the thrill of moving from red to yellow, blue and green levels before starting on 'chapter books" like The Donkey's Egg or The Hungry Lambs. The series was revolutionary in its approach to teaching children to read because it used natural language rather than phonics or controlled vocabulary, drawing on the research on world leaders in early literacy like Sylvia Ashton-Warner and Dr Marie Clay. She then went on to be the talent behind the Storybox Library series with titles like Mrs Wishy Washy and The Kick-a-Lot Shoes.
And it is her knowledge and experience of how children learn that underpins this story so that they can experience "real reading" and consolidate their belief that they can be "real" readers. There is a certain repetition in the storyline as the pirate tries to persuade the woman to let him in but although the woman may be unconventional, the pirate is stereotypical so little ones can think of what they know already and not only understand why the woman refuses but express the sorts of emotions she might be feeling, so they are really engaging with both the text and the illustrations - as "real readers" do. As well, Satake's illustrations are so detailed and vivid that there is lots of scope for predicting what is happening and build their vocabulary as they describe the bliss of listening to the sea at night or the sights, sounds and feels of the storm. Even this old grandma was taken back to her childhood at Bluff, New Zealand and totally immersed.
While there are hundreds of stories written and published for our youngest readers every year, there are few that are so deeply rooted in understanding those early reading behaviours and which consolidate our children's expectations of being readers as well as those by this author. While the world has clearly moved on from the scenario of Grandma arriving in a Vickers Viscount (after 50+ years I still remember the theme of the stories), the process of learning to read remains the same, and this is the perfect support to that. A must for my preschoolers.
Themes: Pirates, Emotions.
Barbara Braxton