The Snail and the Whale

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My real breakthrough was THE GRUFFALO, again illustrated by Axel. We work separately - he’s in London and I’m in Glasgow - but he sends me letters with lovely funny pictures on the envelopes. The book won the Early Years award for the best pre-school book in 2004, the Blue Peter award for Best Book to Read Aloud, 2005, [2] and the Giverny award for Best Science Picture Book 2007. [3]

There once was a snail that hitched a ride on the tail of the whale, and off they went to travel the world at sea. A poetic story of love, adventure and music that demands to be read aloud or possibly sung, depending on the power of the reader's purr. Axel was born in Hamburg, Germany. At school he was good at art, but didn't think of a career in illustration until he won a cuddly purple cow in a drawing competition. He moved to England in 1982 to study illustration at the Bath Academy of Art, and then set up home in London. Julia Donaldson is one of today's most popular writers. Her bestselling titles include The Gruffalo, The Gruffalo's Child and Room on the Broom. Although she is best-known for her picture books, Julia also writes longer novels, plays and songs. She lives in Glasgow and spends a lot of time on stage performing her brilliant sell-out singalong shows! There is a lot of rhyming in the story. Can you find the rhyming words? Can you find other words which rhyme with them?

The Snail and the Whale is a heart-warming story about how friendship can come about in the most remarkable way. Look at one of the pictures, without the accompanying text. Can you write about that part of the creatures’ adventure? Could you think of words / phrases to describe what is happening in the illustration? I really enjoy writing verse, even though it can be fiendishly difficult. I used to memorise poems as a child and it means a lot to me when parents tell me their child can recite one of my books. The Snail and the Whale was adapted for the stage by the theatre company Tall Stories in 2012, and has been on tour around the United Kingdom and the rest of the world.

I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married. These are the caves Beneath the waves, Where stripy fish with featery fins And sharks with hideous toothy grins Swam round the whale And the snail on his tail. But when disaster strikes and the whale is beached in a bay, it is the tiny snail who saves the day. Donaldson has said that it is one of her favourite books, due to its similarity in rhyming style to the works of Edward Lear, of which she was fond of as a child. [1] Plot [ edit ] The Snail and the Whale is a 2003 children's picture book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. It won the 2004 Early Years award for the best pre-school book, the 2005 Blue Peter award for Best Book to Read Aloud, and the 2007 Giverny award for Best Science Picture Book. The Snail and the Whale has also been adapted into an unabridged audiobook, a stage play and translated into British Sign Language. In 2019, a short film based on the book was released.Icebergs, fiery mountains and golden sands, caves beneath the crashing waves, and storm tossed seas are all part of the adventure. And then the whale gets lost and he ends up on the beach in trying to avoid speedboats. It looks like the end of the journey for the poor whale. There are lots of adjectives and other descriptive words in the story which describe different things. Can you find them all? Could you make a poster which shows what they are? Lots of Julia Donaldson books feature animal characters - from whales to ladybirds, from monkeys to mice! And she gazed at the sky, the sea, the land, The waves and the caves and the golden sand, She gazed and gazed, amazed by it all, And she said to the whale, “I feel so small.”

I grew up in a tall Victorian London house with my parents, grandmother, aunt, uncle, younger sister Mary and cat Geoffrey (who was really a prince in disguise. Mary and I would argue about which of us would marry him). Read this again (November 2019) as I can't resist the brilliant Donaldson/Scheffler combination. And it is just as good, if not better, than when I first read it.Look at pictures of snails and whales and think of words / sentences / paragraphs to describe them (see Resources below). At the end of the story, the snail tells his friends all about his adventure. Can you write what he might have said to them? The audiobook with an accompanying audio cassette, is narrated by English voice actor Imelda Staunton, while the audiobook with an accompanying compact disc is narrated by Scottish voice actor David Tennant.