Australian Writer - Ursula Dubosarsky.
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Australian Writer - Ursula Dubosarsky. |
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Classroom Ideas - Upper Primary / Secondary |
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The Red Shoe, The Game of the Goose; How to Be a Great Detective; The First Book of Samuel; Theodora's Gift; Abyssinia.
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Click here
to read
"How I came to write 'The Red Shoe'"
by Ursula Dubosarsky.
Website for the 2004/2005 Old Parliament House exhibition on the Petrov Affair - full of
information and photos and other intriguing details:
And here's the other song Uncle Paul sings "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley
Square":
The online text of Hans Christian Andersen's story, "The Red Shoes":
Polio epidemic 1950s Australia
The phenomenon of invisible friends in childhood
Information on the Argonauts Club ABC radio program for children For Teachers notes click here: http://www.penguin.com.au/puffin/NOTES/pdf/0670894389.pdf
Some history of the origins of this historic European game, including
rules of how to play and other interesting links: A traditional spiral version of the original Game of
the Goose to print out and play. To get some ideas of how you might decorate your own board, take a look at some old and new versions of the Game of the Goose from all round the world: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/2785 Make your own game tokens, the Make your own dice http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/game/cube.pdf When writing “The Game of the Goose”,Ursula was inspired by George Macdonald’s “The Golden Key”. Click here for the online story and click here for some information about it. Ursula was also inspired by Greek mythology. Learn more about the Greek god Hermes and his winged sandals on the ABC’s Greek mythology website (with games, quizzes, craft and more) http://www.abc.net.au/arts/wingedsandals/ Here’s a site about a live version of the game played
in Italy:
Have a class pet of silkworms in a shoebox and
mulberry leaves, like Griselda. Claudie and her
classmates put on a show of the legend of Pyramus and Thisbe from "A
Midsummer Night's Dream." Students can write their own stories of
metamorphosis in the style of Greek and Roman myths such as Ovid’s Pyramus
and Thisbe. Perform the play within the play, from “A Midsummer’s
Night’s Dream” or recreate the tableaux with all the costumed characters
as the children do in the book.
Each chapter of the book opens with a
different quote from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" - students could
attempt to track them down!
Make a Mubbleberry (Mulberry cake) like the one Griselda eats – for when mulberries are in season. Go on a mulberry gathering expedition. Recipe Mix it all up together and cook it in a cake tin on 220 degrees until cooked through – about 40 minutes
Biblical reference, the story and characters the book
is based on. Jews in Germany in 1930s. German-Jewish refugees in Palestine in the 1930s. Jewish refugees in Australia.
Theodora's Gift Balshazzar’s Feast, mentioned in the dedication. Elkanah's
vision at dinner and some of the plot of the novel are based on this
story.
Biblical reference - Daniel 5. Rembrandt’s painting of the Feast. World War Two, the Holocaust and Nuremberg laws –
the law against Jews keeping pets. Symbolism of the pomegranate across cultures. Get a pomegranate and cut it open and count the seeds
inside, as Theodora does. You can relate it to the traditions surrounding
the Jewish festival of the New Year Rosh HaShana, which occurs in
September/October. Read/write/illustrate/perform the Greek myth of
Persephone September 11 2001 Twin Towers attack in New York, as
Theodora sees on the television in the cafe with Rhody Make Pink Shirleys (also known as Shirley Temples)
from grenadine (non-alcoholic pomegranate syrup) and lemonade, like the
one Rhody buys for Theodora in the café. Knit a scarf like Theodora does, using lots of
different colours. Here’s a how-to-knit-a-scarf website for beginners:
Brett Whitely painting of village where
Theodora and Samuel go to stay with Pearl
This novel was inspired by the childhoods of two real
girls, Nina and Kathleen Rouse who lived at Rouse Hill in western Sydney
(now part of the Historic House Trust of NSW) in the late nineteenth
century, who loved dolls and wrote their own newspapers for them. The
house and property can be visited by the public. Cut out dolls and clothes for the members of the
Savoy family in the first half of the book Make a paper house. Bring in a favourite doll or stuffed toy from home. Make families out of them, use them to start a story or poem. Create your own newspaper as Grace did (see beginning
and end of book). Write articles in the style of newspapers of 100 years
ago or of today, handwritten or computer-formatted. Here’s an easy site
that offers help with computer-generated newspapers: Click here to read the full text of Australian poet John Shaw Neilson's poem "The Orange Tree" which is quoted in the novel The meaning of the title. Some websites to look at: Samuel Johnson’s “The History of Rasselas, Prince of
Abyssinia”. Coleridge’s “Xanadu”. Abyssinia/Ethiopia. Prester John
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