A New Green Day

A New Green Day

By Author / Illustrator

Antoinette Portis

Genre

Environment

Age range(s)

7+

Publisher

Scallywag Press

ISBN

9781912650484

Format

Hardback

Published

02-07-2020

Synopsis

Who scribbles on the sidewalk with glistening ink? Snail! Who's a comma in a long, long sentence of a stream? Tadpole! Active readers will delight in the clever language and striking illustrations. On each spread, children will solve riddles about the familiar animals, plants and the weather that one child encounters outdoors throughout a whole day.


'The power of Portis's poems, and the surprise each page turn allows, lets readers experience familiar moments with awakened senses, offering them nothing less than a new world filled with fresh experiences.' - Publishers Weekly, starred review

Reviews

Jessica

A New Green Day is a playful book which provides its readers with a guessing game on the turn of every page; riddles about familiar creatures or objects in nature. The reader can enjoy piecing together the clues within nature's riddles - encouraging them to be curious detectives.

A New Green Day has the power to make its readers more appreciative and aware of our beautiful world. This book is just one of many fantastic creations from Antoinette Portis, all with a common theme - to take a little more notice and be a bit more observant of the world around us.

Each double-page spread reveals the answer to one riddle before sucking you straight into another. The right hand page consists of a cleverly written poetic play on words based upon the personification of our natural world whilst the subsequent left hand page reveals the answer to the riddle with bold imagery. Ingeniously, the personification inside these poems have a significant effect on those who behold the book. It makes us feel the life inside every pebble to the roars of thunder. As we reach the end of the poetic conversation with nature, we have a new outlook and appreciation for everything around us - reconnecting with our world and everything in it.

This book is perfect to share as part of an assembly or as a pivotal text in a topic about looking after our planet. This book lends itself to creative writing opportunities. The children can use the riddles inside as an expert model as they navigate through the fun of writing riddles themselves. There would be great value in creating a sequel to this book, which is full of children's own riddles from poets across the whole school.

This book is best suited to children who are ready to play on words and explore personification in writing. Alternatively, this book is a great way of motivating reluctant readers, showing them that by reading this book they are in-fact accessing a fun guessing game. There should be more books like this!

40 pages / Ages 7-10 years / Reviewed by Jessica Bunney, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 7+

 

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