Making Connections: Jill Tomlinson’s ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of The Dark’ and ‘The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure’.

We read ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark’

and ‘The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure’.

Both of these books are written by

the great children’s author

Jill Tomlinson.

 

We talked about how these stories,

making connections

between the two stories.

We asked ourselves:

How are these books the same

and how they are different?

 

Julia is going to begin

by introducing both books

and talking about

how they are the same.

This is how the stories are the same:

The main characters

are both young animals

that live with their parent(s).

 

The Owl lives with his Mum and Dad

and the Aardvark lives with his Mum.

They are loved and well minded

by the grown ups in their lives.

 

They are both nocturnal.

They both have to look out for ‘danger’.

They are both very inquisitive

especially about food.

 

Both stories follow a pattern.

The same kind of thing happens

in every chapter

over…

and over again.

 

They meet another character

and talk to them,

asking them questions

and finding things out.

 

But this is not tedious

because each of these 

characters are different

and interesting.

 

Also there are differences

in the pattern each time.

Different things get said.

Funny things get said.

Avatar Kila will tell you a little about

how the stories are different

The stories are different because

one story is about an aardvark

and the other is an owl.

 

The owl is a carnivore and the

aardvark is an insectivore.

The aardvark and his Mum

are nomads. The owl family

stay put.

 

Plop the Owl wants to be a day bird.

As the title of the book says,

he is afraid of the dark

and doesn’t want to go hunting

with his Mum or Dad.

This is the problem

that has to be solved

in his story

 

Pim the Aardvark is different

He is looking forward

to going hunting at night

with his Mum.

 

His ‘problem’ is that he is

a brand new, baby aardvark

and he doesn’t know anything.

He isn’t sure at all about

the life of an aardvark

or the world around him.

 

Luckily both stories are the same

in that they both have happy ending.

 

To finish:

In the chapter called ‘The Rotten Digger’

in the ‘The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure’,

Pim tries his hands

(or should that be his claws) at digging.

Here is a video of an aardvark digging 

from Arkive.org, a website of animal videos.

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8 thoughts on “Making Connections: Jill Tomlinson’s ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of The Dark’ and ‘The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure’.

  1. Thanks Sue. We are on a learning curve with the Vokis trying to make them more and more like ourselves. Now if we could get the voice recording right and not have to depend on the adult voices on ‘speech to text’, that would be great. I’ll be experimenting at the weekend.

  2. It was funny when every time Pim said he was an aardvark the animal he was talking to said an odd what. It was like when people thought the owl was a firework or a roly poly pudding.

  3. Yes Jack, there is humour in both stories. Things are said, which made the class laugh, when we read it. So that is another thing that is the same in both stories. Both stories have a pattern.

    The same joke keeps coming up in each chapter. In ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of The Dark’ it is that people think the owl falling from his branch is something else, like a firework, a thunderbolt, a shooting star, or a roly poly pudding.

    In ‘The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure’ the joke that turned up in each chapter was that each time Pim introduced himself, people didn’t hear what he said. So when he said he was an aardvark, they all asked ‘An odd what?’

    I liked that each time the jokes turned up the class laughed. The more the joke was repeated, the more the class enjoyed it. We were expecting the joke each time. After a couple of chapters, we could predict it was coming, but it still made us laugh.

  4. Both the books and the activity sound interesting, and it seems as if the students came up with some pretty good answers! Voki also sounds like an interesting tool.

  5. Thank you L. Our efforts in class are a ‘work in progress’ at the moment, but we are improving week by week as they gain in confidence. Your encouragement is very helpful. Thank you.

  6. Pingback: If Only The Best Birds Sang … » Blog Archive » Last week we learned about Jill Tomlinson, author of ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of The Dark’.

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