Ocean Meets Sky: 1

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Sailing Away Stories as Mentors for Writing. Using the three books in the above invitation, support students to write and illustrate their own sailing away stories. You may want to prompt them with questions like: If they fell asleep and ended up in a boat on their own, where would they go? What creatures would they meet? What would they think, say, or feel? How would the story end once they woke up? Encourage students to return to the three books again and again for inspiration for the storyline, the words, and the illustrations they want to create. Here's how special this book is: my toddler, who has never experienced the death of a loved one and therefore has no idea about the process of grief and healing, understands what is going on in this book. While it is never explicitly stated that Finn's grandfather has passed, and never says that Finn misses him, my son understood. At one point during our second or third reading he said, "I miss my grandpa too!" Thankfully, his grandpas and his great-grandpa are all still with us, but I was amazed that the Fan brothers managed to convey this so clearly through the sparse text and the illustrations...well enough that a two-year-old understood that Finn was experiencing loss. That's really something. Author/Illustrator Study. Gather other books the Fan Brothers have authors and illustrated or just illustrated including The Night Gardener and The Antlered Ship . Compare the text and illustrations across the books. Students may particularly notice the use of color to create a whimsical effect across the books and the ways in which the Fan Brothers use a palette reflective of nature. Gather a variety of colored pencils, graphite pencils, and pens to have students incorporate the colors of nature into their illustrations of fictional stories to create whimsical effects by blurring parts of the landscape.

http://www.kidlitfrenzy.com/kid-lit-frenzy/2018/6/21/ocean-meets-sky-an-interview-with-the-fan-brothersThe writing is fairly sparse, which makes me a bit annoyed that it couldn't have been polished to perfection. As it is, there are a number of sentence fragments. I don't like seeing stuff like that in children's books, since many kids absorb a lot of grammar lessons simply by reading. Children find a mysterious box in the classroom labelled Grandpa’s Stuff. Inside they will find clues to who Grandpa was and his relationship with the main character, Finn. Finn misses his Grandfather after he has passed away and longs to travel to the fantastical worlds that his Grandpa would tell him about in his stories.

I’ve poured my heart and soul into making these PowerPoints beautiful to see, easy to use, resource and understand. The lessons are definitely suitable for Lower KS2, and can work wonderfully with minimal adaptation for Upper KS2 also (my Y6 colleague confirmed this). Children are given a variety of meaningful writing opportunities throughout the sequence and gradually build up the skills to write an extended fantasy story of their own. throughout and explores themes of family, memory and loss. The unit begins by introducing the authors to the children and highlighting the power of bookmaking/storytelling. Children find a

The beginning of the book has illustrations that are a bit more muted. I guess that's supposed to show the mundane ordinary world... but I found them kind of dull and boring. Once Finn gets into the fantasy, the pictures are much more engaging. I particularly liked the island of giant shells and the sea of jellyfish. The great golden fish, though, I found a bit terrifying; he acts as Finn's guide, so he's kind of a necessary part of the story, but I'm not sure how he'd go over with little kids. From the creators of The Night Gardener, comes a stunning new picture book about a young boy who sets sail to find a place his grandfather told him about... the spot where the ocean meets the sky.

And indeed, not really all that much if at all focussing (except for some textual reassurance if required) on the Fan brothers’ printed words but rather on their large and mostly glowingly luminous illustrations has made me not only appreciate but also absolutely love and cherish Ocean Meets Sky. For the pictures are not only truly aesthetically marvellous and visually rich, they also evocatively and engagingly show young Finn’s dreamlike sailing journey to where according to his deceased grandfather the ocean meets the sky as both an absolute visual delight and equally paying homage to the memory of his grandfather, full of whimsy, full of magic, full of unbridled imagination (with the added sweetness that upon waking from his sailing dream, Finn is told that he and his family will be dining on his grandfather’s special dumplings). Finn builds a boat on what would have been his grandfather's ninetieth birthday. It whisks him away on a magical adventure, eventually leading him to the place his grandfather talked about: where the ocean meets the sky. The story itself is fine; as a dream/fantasy, it works. The reader can clearly see how much Finn and his grandfather loved each other, even if the grandfather isn't even present in most of the book. Unlike Ida and the Whale, another picture book about a magical journey that I just read, the goal is more clearly spelled out. Finn really wants to find the place his grandfather talked about. I did like how that journey had a well-defined end. I'm just not sure if the story held my interest as an adult reader. This is lesson 1 from a three-week+ Lesson set Overview and outcomes: based within the context of Ocean Meets Sky by the Fan Brothers. I liked this book a lot. The whimsical steampunk-ish illustrations are brimful of charming details that could keep any adult or child reader engrossed for hours -- a truly inspired mix of whale, fish, bird, and ship imagery. The story is an ambitious blend of light and heavy, realistic and dreamy: it concerns a small boy, Finn, whose grandfather has recently passed away in his old age. Finn reminisces on his loving relationship with his grandfather, a raconteur whose fantastical stories nourished the young boy's imagination. In what is ultimately revealed to be a dream, Finn builds a boat and undertakes a solo nautical journey, assisted by a talking fish guide, in the hopes of reuniting with his grandfather in the paradise where "ocean meets sky"; along the way, he encounters some visually lovely mythic islands populated by book-reading birds and giant shells. In the end, his mother affectionately wakes him up for dinner; though he is never able to reunite with his grandfather in the way he most desires, he is sustained in his bereavement by the power of imagination and the loving presence of his family.

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This beautiful and poignant story has stunning illustrations throughout (matched in the PowerPoints) and explores themes of family, memory and loss. The unit begins by introducing the authors to the children and highlighting the power of bookmaking/storytelling. The fantastically talented Fan Brothers, Terry and Eric, who made their debut with The Night Gardener, return in Ocean Meets Sky, the second picture-book that they have written and illustrated together. Here they follow the story of Finn, a young boy who is missing his (presumably deceased) grandfather. On the day his grandfather would have been ninety, Finn builds himself a ship and sets sail to find that place, mentioned many times by his elderly relative, where the ocean meets the sky. Along the way he encounters many wonders, taking a serene voyage into a fantastic dreamscape...