£5.00 (inc. VAT)
KS: Lower KS2
Year Group: Year 4
Literary Theme: Darkness & Light
Author(s): Neil Gaiman and Divya Srinivasan
Diary entries, informal letters, dialogue, adverts, limericks and other poetry forms
Own version fable
16 sessions, 3+ weeks
This is a three-week plus Writing Root using Cinnamon by Neil Gaiman in which children begin by making inferences about the characters and situations in the story. They go on to consider the emotions of characters including Cinnamon herself (in the form of diaries) and also of their parents when creating adverts. There is explicit teaching of the conventions of dialogue through drama and children go on to write a story in the style of Cinnamon using speech.
In a hot, hot country, ringed with mountains on one side and jungle on the other, lives a princess called Cinnamon. Her eyes are made of pearls, which means that she is blind. And, for reasons her parents the Rajah and Rani cannot fathom, she will not talk. So they offer a reward to anyone who can teach Cinnamon to speak. People travel from far and wide to attempt it, but nothing works. Until a mighty tiger, huge and fierce, prowls into their palace and announces that he is here to teach the girl-cub to talk.
Cinnamon is a modern fable, set somewhere in the Indian subcontinent and features a blind and initially mute protagonist. It is primarily the story of a girl who overcomes adversity and finds strength in an unusual friendship, but is told with a huge amount of wit and humour. The colourful illustrations, by Divya Srinivasan, are stunningly vivid and bring Neil Gaiman’s words to life. It is a great book to spark learning about India. Neil Gaiman is a much-celebrated author, also known for Coraline, Wolves in the Walls and American Gods.
India, Sri Lanka, unusual friendships, independence, freedom
Date written: February 2019
