#violet reader

Written by Robert Munsch Illustrated by Michael Martchenko Suggested age group: 3-5

When a dragon swoops in and destroys her whole castle to a pile of rubble, poor Princess Elizabeth is left with a kidnapped prince and a without a dress. However, she won’t let that stop her from rescuing her true love. She throws on the only thing she can find that isn’t burnt—a brown paper bag—and marches after the dragon to demand that he give back her prince. Unfortunately, dragons are very busy creatures, and do not heed the demands of princesses.

To begin the book, ask children if princesses usually dress in paper bags, and ask for ideas as to why Elizabeth would choose such attire. If you can get your hands on a dragon puppet, now is the time to whip it out. And remember that this dragon likes to show off.

After reading the book, ask children how they feel about Elizabeth rescuing Ronald. Who is usually the hero we see in fairy tales? Why didn’t Elizabeth want to marry Ronald after she worked so hard to save him? Ask the child how they would feel if they worked very hard to do a favour for someone and in return, they only received negatively.

Afterwards, while they’re still feeling inspired and energized, a great extension activity would be to have a child decorate their own paper bag attire—simply using a brown paper lunch bag. Children could use markers or crayons, stickers, foam cutouts, etc. Get creative. Feel free to jump in and decorate your own bag as well!

This story is great for inspire confidence in children—Elizabeth is brave enough to chase down a dragon that destroyed her entire castle despite having nothing to wear but a paper bag.  And then, after she has risked her life to rescue Ronald and all he can do is criticize her, she is confident enough to dump him. She is definitely not your typical prim and proper princess. Elizabeth can help teach children moral development—to ‘do the right thing’, but to also be themselves and not put up with any Roanlds in their lives. Or better yet, to not be a Ronald. The book also has fantastic expressive vocabulary which pairs incredibly well with such simple, yet expressive illustrations which are great for inspiring big imaginations in small children.

Splish Splash Foxes Dash by Geraldo Valério, who also illustrates the book, is a wonderfully engaging first book for young children. His art style is exceptionally interesting—he uses magazines and wrapping paper to create his images. Such a fun art style really adds to the enjoyable content of the book that includes ‘lunching on leaves’ and ‘pirouetting prawns’.

The book is best suited for children around 18-24 months, it’s pages filled with bright, collage-style animals that stand out in front of a white background, really allowing young, learning minds focus on the animals and colours. The alliteration is great for reading in an exaggerated or excited manner and children will pick up on that, learning to accentuate their own words. However, even those as young as 3 months could benefit from the bright, colour focused pages—an age when they can recognize the full colour spectrum. Splish Splash can also easily transition into early reading years when children begin to read the books they love back to their parents—with improving accuracy! Even before a child can read the word, they’ll learn to recognize the animal or the colour, and having both the word and animal/colour will help them make that connection into reading. That those ‘shapes’ (letters) come together to make the sounds for the word ‘red’ or ‘duck’.

Throughout the book parents can pause and ask questions like ‘can you think of any other animals/things are -insert colour here-’. Or, being a book on Canadian animals, parents could ask home-related questions like ‘have we ever seen a duck on our backyard? How about a blue whale!?’ But be prepared for some possibly interesting answers from younger children; perhaps there’s been a recent blue whale sighting in the bathtub!