Varmints

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Children will also dissect the flowers left behind, identifying and labelling the various parts and explaining their various roles in reproduction and pollination. The class are watching the animation of the story alongside this which adds extra information to the story. That this is a fuzzily environmental story about nature doesn’t make this careless use of language ok. Ward and Caste's story sounds too familiar as I think about our own environment and the overuse of materials and abuse of this planet.

The story is as old as industrialisation but I'm sure it has never been told so succinctly and beautifully as here.

From the curious creature staring out at the reader on the cover, to its large physical nature and wild typography and breath-taking art, Ward and Marc Craste's creation needs a patient orator and audience. A variety of themes could be interpreted - loss of natural habitat through urbanisation, loss of identity, societal collapse, Communism(?

And, as with everything Jóhannson has composed, it holds space for both abyssal melancholy and a paper hope bridge above it, achieving a tender, if tenuous, balance over the dark. Really detailed, deep/dark and clever illustrations make the reader really ponder and make meaning of the text. Once, the only sounds to be heard were the buzzing of bees in the grass, the murmuring of moles in the earth, and the song of birds in the sky. The story is simple but effective, and it teaches children important lessons about courage, friendship, and environmental protection. Children in KS2 will, I think, love the animation and the central character, and be engaged by the conversations around its content.

This series of lessons culminates in children writing an explanation text about the life cycle of a plant with a clear structure.

Not every child is going to like this but for those whose imaginations crave deeper, more fantastic stories, this would be perfect for them. It's also the type of book I would have absolutely loved as a small child (I love it now, too, of course) - at five, six years of age, The Dark Crystal was my favourite movie and it was a dark, menacing tale with sinister creatures, death, violence and adventure. This is a three-week Writing Root using the film (which can be found online) and text of Varmints by Helen Ward and Marc Craste. In the case of this book, I couldn't help but think of the definition of "varmint", which is noted just inside the book cover: "an irritating or obnoxious person or animal". Helen Ward trained as an illustrator at Brighton School of Art, under the direction of well-known children's illustrators such as Raymond Briggs, Justin Todd, Chris McEwan and John Vernon Lord.

The sequence of learning starts with children entering the classroom to find seeds and flowers mysteriously left with an urgent letter of appeal from the main protagonist in the text, urging children to look after them and learn all they can about these gifts. There are those who love the hum of bees, the whisper of the wind, the wilderness - and then others arrive, with their tall buildings that "scratched the sky where birds once sang. Adapted and directed by Marc Craste, Varmints is a 24-minute film based on the award-winning book of the same name – written by Helen Ward and illustrated by Marc Craste – that tells the story of a lonely varmint, living in an idyllic world that is suddenly destroyed by the arrival of a grey, high rise city.

The book begins with the sentence, “There was once only the sound of bees and the wind in the wiry grass, the low murmuring of moles in the cool dark earth and the song of birds in the high blue sky. This book is very dark but thinks it has to be to give the right message on how important it is to look after the environment around us.

However, this could be an implied reader because the reader would have to know about the dangers of not looking after the environment to be able to understand the story so for children this might be hard but a good way to show them the impacts it could have. They erect the tall structures, harming their natural world, and going against their own yearnings and instincts while losing a sense of self. Varmints, written by Helen Ward and illustrated by Marc Craste, is a simple yet powerful picture book for older readers (Grades 4 and up).