Research: Books

Story book 1: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a children's book illustrated and written by Eric Carle which was first published by the World Publishing Company in 1969, later published by Penguin Putnam.  It’s about a caterpillar that eats its way through a wide variety of foodstuffs before pupating and emerging as a butterfly. The Very Hungry Caterpillar uses colourful picture and simple text with educational themes like counting, learning the days of the week, different types of foods, and how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.

Synopsise:

A green baby caterpillar hatches from an egg, and then starts craving food. He eats through fruits for five days, one piece of fruit on the first, two on the second, and so on up to the fifth day. Then the caterpillar starts to eat more types of foods. Soon after the caterpillar is finished eating he realise that he has eaten too much and feels ill. The caterpillar soon feels better and then spins a cocoon in which he stays for the following two weeks. Later, the caterpillar emerges as a bright, colourful butterfly with large, gorgeous, multi-coloured wings. These are the types of food that the caterpillar eats: 1 apple, 2 pears, 3 plums, 4 strawberries, 5 oranges, 1 piece of chocolate cake, 1 ice cream cone 1 pickle, 1 slice of Swiss cheese, 1 slice of salami, 1 lollipop, 1 piece of cherry pie, 1 sausage, 1 cupcake, 1 slice of watermelon and 1 green leaf.

Opinion:

This story dose well to entertain young children because in the story book it’s able to attracted their attention with big colourful pictures of food which is affective as its eye catching for due to the contrasts of colours. This can help our performance because we can make bright and colourful costumes for our charters to capture the children’s attention while they watch our piece. The book is also effective because it has educational purposes as each teaches children how to count and other things like different types of food but even with these educational tools in the story children still find the book fun.

Story book 2: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

“Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” Is a children's picture book published in 1967. It was written and illustrated by Bill Martin, Jr. and Eric Carle, the book is designed to help toddler’s learn different colours and the meanings of everyday objects. The book itself has little plot. Instead, the narrator of the book asks various animals what they see with them saying what they see is another coloured animal and this is repeated following the chain of animals. The story itself has a Brown Bear, Red Bird, Yellow Duck, Blue Horse, Green Frog, Purple Cat, White Dog, Black Sheep, a Goldfish, a Teacher and Students.

Opinion:

Brown bear, Brown bear, what do you see? Is written by the same person who create the very Hungry caterpillar so they have similar methods of telling the story but Brown bear, Brown bear, what do you see? Has more creative art work for pictures as it has a lot more to show with the different types of animals. This links to my point about using bright and colourful thing to capture the children’s attention towards our show. The book itself has little story and more educational themes but is still very entertain which could show that our show doesn’t need to have a big plot but just needs to be entertain for the children with colours and creative, loveable characters.