The Snail and the Whale

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They sailed to towering icebergs and far off lands, fiery mountains and golden sands and all the while the waves arched and crashed around them but the snail remained safe on the tail of the whale. When they went underwater the snail was still safe and she was much admired by passing stripy fish and sharks with hideous grins. This is the tide coming into the bay, And these are the villagers shouting, “Hooray!” As the whale and the snail travel safely away . . . 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? Everyone, including the local firemen rushed to the beach and they all began spraying the whale to keep him cool while some of the children dug around him to provide water from under the sand. Then the tide came in and much to everyone's relief the whale, complete with snail on its tail, took to the water once more. I decided to write a sea story because Axel had previously told me he was getting fed up drawing trees and stormy skies (although actually there is one stormy sky in the book).

Together they set off on a fantastic journey, passing frozen icebergs and fiery volcanoes and meeting all sorts of sea animals on the way, until the tiny snail finds himself oppressed by the vastness of the world. A beautiful tale of an unlikely friendship, a tour of the world and a heroic rescue. Based on the picture book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. This precipitates an epic journey that sees the snail and the whale in icy seas, observing mountains and golden sands on the shore, under the sea admiring the sea-life, surviving a thunderstorm and avoiding pleasure seekers in a holiday resort. Imagine that you had to write a newspaper report about the people (and the snail) who saved the whale. What would it say? And this is the snail with the itchy foot! “A snail! A snail!” The teacher turns pale. “Look!” say the children. ”It's leaving a trail.” This is the trail Of the tiny snail, A silvery trail saying . . .This is one of my favourites out of all the books I have written for Axel Scheffler to illustrate, perhaps because I feel I have captured something of the soulful whimsy of the Edward Lear poems I enjoyed as a child.

The human activity makes the humans swim too close to the shore. Can you find out when this might have happened to real whales in the past? Discuss what we might be able to do to stop it from happening again. BBC One and Magic Light announce The Snail and the Whale for Christmas 2019". BBC. BBC . Retrieved 6 November 2019. 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. 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.

Julia Donaldson Adaptations

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.” 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? Funnily enough, I find it harder to write not in verse, though I feel I am now getting the hang of it! My novel THE GIANTS AND THE JONESES is going to be made into a film by the same team who made the Harry Potter movies, and I have written three books of stories about the anarchic PRINCESS MIRROR-BELLE who appears from the mirror and disrupts the life of an otherwise ordinary eight-year-old. I have just finished writing a novel for teenagers. This is the sky So vast and high Sometimes sunny and blue and warm, Sometimes filled with a thunderstorm, With zigzag lightning Flashing and frightening The tiny snail On the tail of the whale. 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.