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.

We needed:

First the girls half filled their jam jars with vinegar before adding a few drops of food colouring.

Next they sprinkled in a little glitter, followed by a good squeeze of washing up liquid (you could also use bubble bath lotion).

After mixing everything together, we put the jars on the baking tray, added a heaped teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to each jar and said our spells…

In the blinking of an eye our potions were bubbling away casting a magic spell over all of us!

Once the bubbling was finished, we could reuse each potion 3 or 4 times by giving it a good stir and adding a little more bicarb. When we ran out of bicarb the girls got their cauldrons and used the spent potions to create even more fearsome brews, giving them plenty of opportunity for messy, sensory play!

This activity was a hit all round. Not only is it quite literally magic to little eyes to see their potions hubble and bubble, it’s also an opportunity to learn a little bit of science if you feel so inclined (the foam which bubbles out is the result of a reaction between the vinegar and the bicarbonate of soda: when they mix tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide gas are released and these bubbles of gas churn up the washing up liquid creating a bubbly foam).

If you’re kids aren’t in to Harry Potter, here are some other great books that would be fun to read alongside creating these bubbling potions:

And as for some magical music you could do worse that trying these tunes:

What are your favourite children’s books which feature a little bit of magic?

It seems to me that children’s books can be especially brilliant at enabling, encouraging their readers to suspend disbelief, to enter into another world where the events described or drawn on paper really do happen, really do exist. Perhaps calling it a suspension of disbelief isn’t accurate; could it be that kids still believe in the magic in some sense?

Press Here by Hervé Tullet is the book that’s got me thinking about how and why we as readers suspend disbelief. It’s a brilliantly simple, brilliantly magical interactive, imaginative book that deserves to be inside many children’s Christmas presents this year.

At first glance this book might not startle you. There’s not much more to its physical presence than a yellow dot and a few simple instructions directed at the reader. There are no lavish illustrations and no poetic text. But put the book into your hands, or even better the hands of some slightly curious children, and Puff! you’ll be surrounded by enchantment.

You’ll be asked to push buttons, tap buttons, blow onto the page or even clap at the book and suddenly you’ll be possessed with supernatural powers to create, to make disappear, to turn all the lights off, and more. Who doesn’t enjoy (the idea of) having magic in their fingertips?

Tullet is a creator par excellence of books that get their readers doing things, forming physical (as well as emotional) bonds with the books. This summer’s big hit with M was Tullet’s The Scribble Book – an activity book that appealed enormously to her love of being active and wild and slightly out of control! (You can read my review of it here.)

I also have stashed away for a rainy day The Book with a Hole; it’s one of those children’s books I want to keep for myself I think it’s so much fun (and it would go marvellously well with this activity described by The Artful Parent).

You can download the official Press Here activity sheets here (a pdf file). If you’ve got a colour printer at home these are great fun. If not, perhaps you can try what we got up to.

Press Here Activity Sheets

First we made a button machine; literally a machine covered in buttons to press, and when you pressed them magical, wonderful things happened.

We selected some especially tactile buttons…

…we covered a box in silver foil and then attached our buttons using blobs of playdough (so that when we pressed on the buttons there was a big of “give”).

You had to be careful which buttons you pressed – some turned you into princesses, others into dinosaurs. Some made chocolate cake appear from thin air, others drenched you in bogey soup. Some filled the air with the sound of bells, whilst others gave you electric shocks! We had lots of fun discovering what they all did

Whilst I was upstairs putting laundry away the girls then took it upon themselves to create a switch machine using old buckles in our button box. Again, you had to be careful about turning these switches on and off; before you knew it you could be transported to the jungle or made invisible.

I know a book has been an especially big hit with my girls when they can’t stop thinking of ideas they want to make real, inspired by what they’ve read. So when M and J told me they wanted to make their own version of Press Here I needed no further convincing that we had a very special book in our hands.

The girls decorated their book cover with circle stamps (corks and paint).

They filled an accordion book with circles of fabric and then wrote down what would happen if you touched, pressed, stroked or even licked each circle.

Many of the magical results were inspired by how the various fabrics felt or looked.

Whilst we played with buttons and made buttons to press we listened to:

Photo: Kevan

What books have you and your kids enjoyed recently where you’ve been encouraged to do more than “just” read them?

Thanks to @AliB68, @FuseEight and @ReadingJay for stimulating my imagination and educating me with resources and thoughts about suspension of disbelief in children’s literature.