With all the elements of a fairy tale (an enchanted wood, a trapped heroine, a terrifying giant, a sprinkling of magic, kindness from animals and a love story) Pushka is a story to capture the imagination. There’s just the right amount of adrenalin and fear (Will the giant get his way? Will Lulu, the giant’s harp-playing ballerina of a puppet be able to escape?), made bearable by the beauty and wonder of the setting and a joke or two to relieve the tension (Pushka is, after all, a circus clown).

The illustrations have a dream-like quality about them with lots of soft-focus, pastel tones. The story is great fun to read aloud, with opportunities to make silly noises, to sing, and to growl. The storytelling itself has quite a cinematic feel; the events unfold in the present tense, and the pacing of the story times points of tension with page turns to perfection.

In fact, it turns out that Stephen Mackey has created an animation of Pushka which you can watch here. It isn’t identical to the book (and I don’t know which was created first), but both formats share a lot of elegance, charm and magic.

Hopefully the animation will inspire you to seek out the book. It’s an enchanting fairy story told with pace, simplicity and grace.

So here’s how M and J turned Pushka into their play. Of course there were billboards advertising the show:

Tickets and programmes were printed to sell:

We had to create a water squirting flower for Pushka to use to try to dampen the fire. We used this tutorial as our guide:

Here’s our finished flower (it worked amazingly well!):

The stage was set with trees made from huge cardboard rolls (Thanks Grandpa!) with paper cone branches taped on. Plenty of sparkly lights and glittery snowflakes (instead of the stars in the book) completed the scene with just the right hint of wintery-ness.

We used a brio train to represent the circus caravan:

Casting was made a little more complicated by the fact that both girls wanted to be Lulu. This was solved by having an intermission half way through the play when they swapped roles and costumes.

I played the mean old giant, and we took the curtain call all together.

We prepared a soundtrack for our play:

Other activities which would be fun to try alongside reading Pushka include:

Did you or your kids put on a show over Christmas? Did you go to see a show as a family?
Oh, and if you’re a (fairly) regular reader of the blog and haven’t left a comment on yesterday’s post, please head on over there and do so!

Disclosure: I received my copy of this book from the publisher. This review, however, remains my own and honest opinion.

Session 1

Book: The Great Big Book of Families by Mary Hoffman and Ros Asquith
Follow up book: Kids by Laurence and Catherine Anholt
Focus activity: (Group) collage with images of children and families
Resources required: pre-cut-out images of people from magazines, either paper and glue or contact paper
Additional Books: Big Book of Families by Laurence and Catherine Anholt, So Much by Trish Cooke and Helen Oxenbury.

A cautionary note: When we chose this activity we didn’t realise how difficult it would be to find plenty of images of non-white people in magazines. Although maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise it was still a shock to realise how rarely non-white faces feature in “general interest” magazines. I found the best source of inclusive images was council publications! Finding photos of disabled people doing normal every day activities was even more difficult.

Session 2

Book: Wake Up! by Katie Cleminson (which I reviewed here)
Follow up book: Tuck me in! by Dean Hacohen and Sherry Scharschmidt (which I reviewed here)
Focus activity: “Dressing” dolls with a collage made from fabric squares
Resources required: “Dolls” (we’re using this image and printing it on A4 paper), lots of small fabric squares (I cut up some of my remnants I’ve been hanging on to from various sewing projects, but you could ask children to donate old, worn clothes and cut them up if you don’t have your own fabric stash), wool cut into strips, PVA glue, pens/pencils to decorate the dolls and add faces.
Additional Books: Kiss Good Night, Sam by Amy Hest, illustrated by Anita Jeram, All in a Day by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Nikki McClure

Session 3

Books: If you’re happy and you know it by Anna McQuin and Sophie Fatus, Head Shoulders Knees and Toes by Annie Kubler
Follow up book: The Hokey Cokey Teddy Bear Song Book
Focus activity: Dancing and singing. Play CD that accompanies If you’re happy and you know it/ play video from YouTube on white screen and dance/sing along. For other songs, play relevant tracks on this or similar CD.
Resources required: Space, CD/internet access. Optionally add in musical instruments if children prefer to play them or have mobility issues.
Additional Books: Doing the Animal Bop by Jan Ormerod, Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton

Session 4

Book: A house is a house for me by Mary Ann Hoberman and Betty Fraser (which I reviewed here)
Follow up book: Whose House? By Colin and Jacqui Hawkins
Focus activity: Creating a house-shaped bookmark full of bookshelves
Resources required: This template (a pdf file), pre-cut, glue, pens/pencils for colouring in
Additional Books: Come Home with Us by Annie Kubler

As these sessions are for Foundation Stage there will be lots of independent play based activities available for the children at the same time such as dolls to dress and bathe, doll houses of various sorts to play with and minature world toys (eg garages, stations).

The Nutcracker by Susan Chandler, illustrated by Kate Leake

A lovely version for the younger crowd (say, 2-5 years), this is a great introduction to the key characters in the story of the Nutcracker without going into lots of detail. J adored the idea of toys coming alive (perhaps primed by the Toy Story films) and enjoyed the illustrations – simple, slightly wobbly line drawings with a child-like quality in muted colours, dominated by pastel pink and purple. No explicit connection is made between this story and the Tchaikovsky ballet, but of all the books reviewed here it is this one that is most similar to the ballet rather than to the original Hoffman tale.

The Nutcracker by John Cech, illustrated by Eric Puybaret

This version (which is more loyal to the original Hoffman tale of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King rather than to Pepita’s libretto for Tchaikovsky’s ballet in that there is a second story within the first, about Princess Pirlipat and the nut Crackatook) is considerably longer than the Chandler/Leake version and so I read it to the girls in a way I’ve never read a book to them before; they both were playing with playmobil on the floor whilst I sat and read it aloud, as if they were listening to an audio story.

It felt rather strange for me as I’m used to reading with the kids in my lap, sitting more or less still, rather than moving around and getting on with other things at the same time but this approach worked really well for both children who would come up every few minutes to take a look at the illustrations and then move back to their playmobil. I’m sure J wouldn’t have sat still for a story of this length, but it was clear she still enjoyed it and got something from it. I shall try to use this technique again with other longer stories when I want to read to both children.

Although the girls didn’t pore over the illustrations I enjoyed them greatly. I kept thinking of art deco posters – lots of curves, plenty of graded colour, yet somehow restrained, perhaps because many of the forms are almost geometric rather than naturalistic.

If it were interesting and beautiful illustrations or a great book for a bedtime read for an older child this is the one I’d choose out of my selection, although if you’re looking for a book which tells the tale of the ballet per se, this isn’t it.

The Nutcracker based on the classic story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, illustrated by Julie Paschkis

Paschkis has done a marvellous job with her lyrical storytelling in this version of the Hoffman (rather than the ballet) Nutcracker with lines like like “Uncel Drosslemeier was small and thin, and his face was covered with little crisscross wrinkles, as if a spider had spun its web all over his skin.” In comparison, the Cech retelling seems a little bland, whist this sings and is full of small background, descriptive detail giving the story a sense of authenticity and freshness; Paschkis is very loyal to the Hoffman story but doesn’t ever give the impression of being constrained by retelling it.

Unfortunately Paschkis’ illustrations don’t work for me. They seem as if they haven’t been quite worked through; the wide decorative borders full of with folk-like motives could be exactly the sort of thing I love, but here they don’t click with me. Some her characters have a little of the grotesque about them – the nutcracker with the huge chin, and the rather plain Clara. Of course, you could argue that this unatractiveness is very deliberate – the Hoffman story (rather than the ballet version) makes much of why the nutcracker is ugly, but even with an understanding of Paschkis’ decision, unattractive lead characters make the pictures much harder to enjoy.

This book contains a CD with excerpts from the Ballet even though at no point is the connection made between the story told in the book and the story of the ballet.

The Nutcracker, adapted by Janet Schulman, illustrated by Renee Graef

Upon our first reading of this I was disappointed. Schulman’s text sometimes grated a little with me with its slightly jarring use of language e.g. the archaic “Godpapa Drosselmeir” and the language used by the children seeming to be very far from the sort of thing a real child would say e.g. when Marie says “You’re a hard-hearted creature, Fritz“.

I also felt the choice made by Graef to set her traditional illustrations in 19th century Germany (although a nod to the time when Hoffman wrote his original story) was a poor one as it felt that in opting for historical accuracy it was harder to capture the more fairytale-like, fantastical aspects of this story.

However, after several more readings this book has ended up being pretty popular with all of us…

M really loved the illustrations full of little small details, and the page showing Marie and Fritz seeing their bedecked Christmas tree for the first time epitomised what I think M is hoping to see at Christmas. Although I didn’t enjoy reading the story aloud, the book comes with a CD containing not only excerpts from the ballet, but also the entire story read aloud and so both girls have had this on a lot as they have played the past few days. The independence an audio CD gives the girls is something they really like – they can enjoy the story whenever and wherever they like, and how many times in a row they like.

I also really liked how Schulman mangages to weave lots of elements from the ballet into Hoffman’s story: when Marie and the Nutcracker visit the Land of Toys once the Mouse King has been vanquished there is lots of dancing – all the dances you would want to see from the ballet, including the Russian Cossack, the Chinese Tea Dance, the veiled Arabian dancer and the Waltz of the Flowers are effortlessly intertwined in the story making this a good read if you wanted to prepare a child for seeing the ballet version of Nutcracker.

So to summarize:

Have you read any other versions of The Nutcracker? Please do leave a comment if there’s a version that you particularly like. Sur La Lune has more recommendations of picture book versions of the Nutcracker – if you don’t know Heidi’s website but are interested in fairy and folk tales you should definitely check it out. I’m looking forward to the next Ella Bella Ballerina book by James Mayhew which is all about the ballet Nutcracker and due out toward the end of next year.

On Friday I’ll be posting Here’s the post about the activities we got up to alongside our reading of these lovely picture books – I know this is a busy time of year for many people but I really hope to see you then!