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CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: "The Story of the Little Mole who knew it was none of his business"

  “The story of the Little Moles ho knew it was none of his business” is a hilarious story about a mole who has to discover what kind of animal pooped on her head. She goes around asking different animals “Did you do this on my head?”. All the animals keep showing her that they didn’t by showing how they do it until she finally discovers it. The story is written by Werner Holzwarth and Wolf Erlbruch. The original book is in German and they titled it “Vom kleinen Maulwurf, der wissen wollte, wer ihm auf den Kopf gemacht hat”. The English translation is a little bit free as it would be something like “The little mole who wanted to know who did that on her head”. I actually knew the story in Catalan, and it was translated more accurately as “La talpeta que volia saber qui li havia fet allò al cap”   and in Spanish “ El topo que quería saber quién se había hecho aquello en su cabeza ”. I discovered this story when I was studying my degree and I recently bought it as a must hav...

WILBUR IS NOT ENGLISH

  Three years ago, I was teaching English as a foreign language to 7-year-old kids. For me, teaching this age is a great challenge as I find these young ones extremely demanding in a challenging way. Once I pass through the door, I know I need to have a set of activities prepared, all following a logical order and with multiple options just in case they don't find an activity enough motivating. However, there is a classic learning experience that always works no matter how old it is, Winnie the Witch's stories. Going back to when I was studying my teaching degree, we analysed some children’s books. One of them was “Winnie the Witch”. I actually sounded very familiar, so I assumed Winnie was one of this famous British characters such as Wallace & Gromit and I thought I had probably read it when I was a kid myself as a children’s classic. The day came when talking to my school language assistant I mentioned using some of Winnie’s books. My assistant was British, and she w...