6 Feb 2008

Stellaluna

On Duncan's treasured Green Eggs and Ham CD Rom, there's a sample of a story called Stellaluna. He took an interest in this, and looked it up on Google video, finding a film of a woman discussing the book, which he watches and quotes from frequently.

Since he loves this book so much, I ordered him a copy. He was delighted when the postman arrived with his parcel. He immediately started reading the first few pages, then listened as I read the rest.

I'd never heard of Stellaluna before and it's a really lovely story, about a baby fruit bat who is separated from her mother, then sheltered and fed by a bird family. She has to quash her bat ways, of flying by night and sleeping upside down and behave 'properly', like a bird.

Eventually she is reunited with her own mother and rest of the bats. She wants her friends, the baby birds to enjoy the ripe fruit and thrill of night time flying, but they all realise that's not the best thing for birds. The birds and bats discuss their differences and similarities and conclude that in spite of everything, they are good friends.

Duncan has referred to himself as Stellaluna many times, and says I am the mother bat. Then he puts on a small, high voice and says, 'mother, where are you?' and I have to swoop down and wrap my arm-wings around him. He has also pretended to be the mother bat. He put on Lady's dressing gown, tying it tight around his waist, then he stuffed a few soft toys under the robe and wrapped his flappy sleeves around them.

If it wasn't for him, I'd never have heard of this book. I'll just add it to the list of things he's taught me about.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great story... I gotta remember to buy this book to my son when he's a little older and able to understand it better. Or maybe I'll just go and get the CD ROM. My 4-year-old loves to play in the computer, and I think we played with the Dr. Seuss software a bit once in the Apple store.

Sharon McDaid said...

It's quite a recent thing that Duncan enjoys book and stories, and he's almost 8. I think that the CD roms paved the way for him, since he likes the computer so much and can control the pace and order of the story as he wants. I'd say if your son enjoys playing on the computer, he'd also liked the story CD Roms.
Have you heard of Starfall? It's a great site!

Anonymous said...

Sharon, Starfall is one of my son's favorites. He knows all stories by heart (on the "Learn to Read" level). He absolutely loves spelling.

I wish there were more sites like Starfall, but so far nothing really compares to it. The content, the animation are just great.

Sharon McDaid said...

Do you know about Literactive? It's great too, tough you have to register to use the site, it's free and they never spam your e-mail.