Stick Man

Stick Man

Written by Julia Donaldson

Illustrated by Axel Scheffler

Arthur A. Levine Books, 2008

31 pages

Fantasy

            Have you ever heard of a stick man?  I haven’t either, but in this story, they exist!  There is Stick Man, his Stick Lady Love, and their three stick children, and they all live in the family tree.  One morning, Stick Man goes out for his morning jog, but things do not go as Stick Man had planned.  A dog thinks Stick Man is a regular stick, so he picks him up and starts playing fetch with him.  Stick Man finally gets free from the dog and wants to go back to the family tree, but he then gets picked up by a girl and thrown into a river.  Things continue to go downhill from there.  He gets picked up and used for different purposes, and he is getting farther and farther from his family tree.  Will he ever make it back to his family tree or see his family again?  Read Stick Man by Julia Donaldson to find out!

            Axel Scheffler did a wonderful job illustrating this book.  In all of his illustrations, he begins with pencil sketches and then outlines the illustrations with a black dip pen.  He then colors them in with ink and colored pencils or crayons.  He implements a cartoon-style with his illustrations, and he really brought Stick Man and his family to life in this story by showing different expressions on their faces.  The illustrations are displayed in a variety of ways throughout the book with some being doublespreads, some occupying only one page, and others taking up only a portion of a page.  Children would really enjoy looking at these illustrations while reading this story.

            This book would be fitting in any classroom ranging from kindergarten to second grade, and it could be used in a variety of ways.  It could be used to initiate a writing activity about the students’ families.  In this story, family is very important to Stick Man.  It is so important to him that he desperately wants to get back home and be with them!  The teacher could use that as a starting point for the writing activity.  This story could also be used as part of a poetry/rhyming lesson.  This story is written in rhyme, so the students could identify the rhyming words while the teacher reads it out loud.  Furthermore, this story could be used when talking about the four seasons.  The story begins in the spring and ends in the winter, and there are pictures throughout the story depicting the different seasons.  The teacher could ask the students to identify different things in the pictures that let them know what the season is.  Therefore, Stick Man by Julia Donaldson would be a great addition to any kindergarten, first, or second grade classroom.