Monkey Puzzle

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We love this book too, such a great rhyming structure to it and as always the illustrations are lovely!

Monkey says no,no,no that's not my mum,he says that his mum is furry, so butterfly leads him to a spider. He moved to England in 1982 to study illustration at the Bath Academy of Art, and then set up home in London.It could be very interactive as there’s repetition which the children could join in with, you could ask the children to guess the animal using the butterflies descriptions, ask how they think the monkey might be feeling at the start, middle and end as he goes on his adventure to find his mum, you could question why the butterflies babies don’t look like her and talk about the process of the how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. Monkey Puzzle has again pretty illustrations by Axel Scheffler that are engaging and fun to look at. Brown fur' is Little Monkey's next clue but the creature hanging upside down in a tree isn't his mum; 'she's not nearly so small' explains little monkey.

I can’t imagine that anyone other than Axel could have given such character and humour to the animals which the butterfly mistakes for the monkey’s mum. The clever aspect of this tale is the butterfly being unsure who they're looking for as their babies differ from them. I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married.

We made a felt board so that Burt could act out the story as we read it and then play with the characters and retell the story in his own words. Butterfly decides to help him find her, monkey says that his mother is big so butterfly leads him to an elephant. Confusion unfolds as the butterfly uses only the most immediate piece of information when looking for the monkey's mum, for example 'She's big!