Finding the Main Character
and Papper Puppets
“Who is the main character?” I asked my son after we finished our first read through of Kate Rowinski’s “L.L. Bear’s Island Adventure.”
“The baby seal,” he said.
This wasn’t the right answer. The bear was in the title. The bear was on every page. The reader experienced the story world through the bear’s point of view. Yet, that seal stood out for my son.
In this book, the seal is a secondary character who gets lost, found again, and learns an important lesson about staying close.
That secondary character creates a problem that the main character has to solve. And that problem is one of great importance to young children who are learning about the dangers of leaving Mama’s side.
So in our conversation, we acknowledged that change, and also talked about how the bear had helped to teach the seal his lesson.
And even though the main character, Bear, doesn’t have a significant change, he does solve an important problem. For children, that is very important to see modeled.
We went through the book a second time, like this, talking about things. Then my son wanted to read it a third time. I was tired, so instead of reading it myself, I asked my son to help me. On each page, I asked him to tell me what was happening based on the pictures. This is a great activity for sequencing of events, looking to the pictures for clues, and memory recall.
This done, he asked me to read it yet AGAIN.
Deep sigh. We did have other school lessons to do and the baby would only nap for so long. But this little lost seal was obviously important to my son. He was thinking through some things.
I decided it was time for an extension activity. I pulled out some construction paper and decided to make popsicle stick puppets. He watched me draw and we talked about the characters. I gave him some crayons (and he wanted to glue them to a background).
Then I left the room to get my coffee and overheard his play. He hid the baby seal behind a pillow and begin enacting the search by moving the other puppets around the room. He recalled details from the book: “I’t’s too foggy! I can’t see!” And then he added in his own creative flare: the Uncle seal had a sneezing fit on the way (he is obsessed with play-sneezing right now).
I was so intrigued by the way that my son attached to this book and stuck with it for the better part of an hour. Maria Montessori, the Child development and education theorist, often instructed parents and teachers to “follow the child.” I felt that by following my son today, I was really able to get a sense of what ideas he was working through. And I was thankful for the book and puppets that gave him the tools to do the processing he needed to do.