Diary of a Wombat

Product Information

Family wants to dry washing on the line; wombat doesn’t want things dangling onto her nose, so chews washing on line.

Unusually for a children’s book, the wombat is female yet has not been given any typically feminine markers, such as a big pink bow. This is partly to do with the realistic style of art. (There is no obvious sexual dimorphism in wombats — you can’t easily tell the sex of a wombat unless you’re an expert.) I wonder if you assumed the wombat was male until “For Pete’s sake! Give her some carrots!” A study by Janet McCabe told us that unless animal characters are given obvious female markers then we tend to read them as male.Ask students to discuss the story 'The Wombat Diary' in theirgroups, with reference to the class timeline (displayed),and identify Mothball's main motive in life, then describe how he achieves it. Q. What is Mothball describing as a ‘flat, hairy creature?’ Response: The doormat. (Text participant) We can extrapolate that things will continue as they did before, but this time the wombat’s life is even more convenient as she doesn’t even have to walk up the garden path to get fed. COMPARE AND CONTRAST

single work picture book ; The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley (Who Planned to Live an Unusual Life) Martine Murray, So they're real characters, wombats. Diary of a Wombat is written from the wombat's perspective, and is incredibly adorable and funny. Her diary consists of sleeping, eating, scratching, and sleeping some more - until a family of humans moves in and she discovers she can get some tasty food if she bangs on tin rubbish bins. She's also protective of this new family, and valiantly does battle with the flat hairy creature (the doormat) before demanding a reward. Then, a Goodreads friend alerted me to this book – and I simply had to have it. It arrived today, and did not disappoint. The illustrations are superb, and the story (though limited in vocabulary and variety of scene) immediately grabbed both me and my husband.

Interview with my 4 year old (who won the book by scratching her ear with her toe, just like a wombat)** Okay, so until now I’ve been saying the same things, which are general rules but rules can be broken. So far I’ve told you that in a story with mythic structure the big struggles increase in intensity until one massive life-and-death big struggle. This is seen clearly in the Solla Sollew picture book by Dr. Seuss, which is why I included it in this series. The wombat has simple needs and lives in a wombat utopia — a rural human environment with a large supply of carrots growing in the garden, good soil for digging holes and everything else she could possibly want. The wombat’s stand-out feature is that she wants for nothing. But for narrative drive, a story requires that the main character want something.