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  • ‘Oscar and Arabella and Ormsby’ by Neal Layton: Book Review

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    Title of the Book: Oscar and Arabella and Ormsby

    Author: Neal Layton

    Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton (Hodder Children’s Books)

    Publication Year: 2007 (Paperback Edition 2008)

    Pages: 32 pgs.

    ISBN: 978-1-44496-722-7

    Age Group: PYP (Grades 1 & 2)

    Genre: Historical Fiction

    Type: Paperback

    IBO & IGCSE Subjects Covered: English, Reading, Library Class, Global Perspectives, Wellbeing & UOI

    Review Written By: Fiza Pathan

    Introduction

    Neal Layton’s ‘Oscar and Arabella and Ormsby’ is the third book in the Oscar and Arabella series. The first book in this series, titled ‘Oscar and Arabella’, was published in 2002, introducing the world to the intelligent mammoth best friends for life, namely handstand-crazy Oscar and dignified but funky Arabella. The second book in this series was published in 2003 and was titled ‘Oscar and Arabella Hot Hot Hot’, which chronicled how these two best-friend mammoths managed to beat the oncoming climate change. The third book in the series was published in hardback form in 2007. It was titled ‘Oscar and Arabella and Ormsby’ in which a lively Woolly Rhinoceros was introduced into the plot and was trying to gain the attention of beautiful Arabella, but who, in the bargain, was causing Oscar a lot of heartache and much else.

    The paperback edition of the third book was published in 2008 by Hodder and Stoughton, and I came across this edition of the book at my local lending library this year, 2025. Note that the Oscar and Arabella books are not currently available in India on Amazon, nor are the Mammoth Academy books, which are offshoots of the original Oscar and Arabella Mammoth series. However, these books are readily available in the UK and on Amazon.com. Nevertheless, I hope that the creator of the Oscar and Arabella series will soon find a way to make his work available to the Indian market because his illustrations are gorgeousness personified and he manages to make a reader laugh out loud and yet learn a lot of information related to Prehistory and especially the Ice Age through his books.

    I don’t know about any other IB or IGCSE PYP teachers worldwide, but for me personally, I think that the British manage to create the best PYP or Primary Years Program storybooks on this planet, period! There is no beating their subtle humor, excellent comic timing, concise plots, likable characters, and gorgeous illustrations. It is as if they were born as a nation to create amazing PYP or Younger Reader storybooks! And I’m not being a racist here, I’m just being genuine and truthful when I say this – I’ve been really gorging on many PYP books for the past seven months and I can say genuinely that the British ones are always the ones that are funny and where the PYP kids manage to roll on their matted PYP Library floors and laugh till tears come streaming down their eyes!

    ‘Oscar and Arabella and Ormsby’ manages to certainly create that hilarity in the classroom especially if the storybook is in the hand of a professional storyteller PYP teacher who can narrate the story in the way Neal Layton wished it to be narrated: which is in a not so serious but serious enough manner typical of the British as is seen in the books by Roald Dahl and now his protégé David Walliams. Therefore, Neal Layton’s book would be perfect for an IGCSE or IB Reading Class or a Library Class where reflections on the value obtained through the telling of the story can be gleaned from the students and where particular chart making, researching or even dramatic activities can be done centering around the three friends who met up with each other during the wee end of the last Ice Age.

    Neal Layton has recently been longlisted for the prestigious SLA (School Library Association Information Book Award 2025). This is for his latest publication titled ‘What is AI?’, which is readily available both in Kindle and Paperback forms on Amazon India, as well as on all other major Amazon websites that I managed to peruse while typing this book analysis. I also realized after gold-digging a bit on my Goodreads account that Neal Layton has in the past teamed up with one of my favorite PYP authors namely Michael Rosen to create some of my most favorite PYP or Younger Readers storybooks like ‘Rover’ and ‘Uncle Gobb and the Dread Shed’ along with the upcoming ‘Hot Food: Nice!’ which will be released probably according to Goodreads on the 13th of January, 2026. I used to love that book titled ‘Rover’ when I was a student at school myself in the year 1999 or 2000, I would have been 9 or 10 years old then and though I had progressed onto reading unabridged classics like Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and Plato’s ‘The Republic’ (check my two internationally published memoirs for more information on this) I still loved to speedread through these junior reads just to annoy my home-room teachers who used to take us kids twice a week (what bliss!) to our school library for the one hour long (short!) library period at Bombay Scottish School, Mahim. ‘Rover’ was a favorite of mine, and when I started a tuition Book Club and Library at my home for my students called the ‘Born to Read Book Club’ in the year 2014, I made sure that I procured a copy of ‘Rover’ by Michael Rosen and Neal Layton for the library. To know more about my bizarre reading habits and adventures in books and with books, you can check out my two award-winning memoirs titled ‘Scenes of a Reclusive Writer and Reader of Mumbai: Essays’ and ‘The Reclusive Writer and Reader of Bandra West’ on Amazon. To know more about my life as a multiple-award-winning author of over 20 books, you can check out the CV on my website.

    Summary

    Oscar and Arabella were two woolly mammoths who lived during the last leg of the last Ice Age. They were the best of friends, and for Oscar, there was no other friend more special than Arabella in his life. They used to always be together and enjoyed going on nature treks, especially through the pine forests of the northern regions of their world. However, one fine day, they noticed a newcomer to their herd. He was Ormsby, a Woolly Rhinoceros who was lively, highly extroverted, multi-talented, and who was looking to make a mark with Arabella, the Woolly female Mammoth. Oscar found Ormsby to be quite a nuisance, but Arabella found Ormsby to be quite entertaining. Whatever Oscar tried to do to impress Arabella, Ormsby did better with some additional elements along with the original activity. It came one day to a head when Ormsby and Oscar were battling their tusks and horns respectively with each other to see who was the better Ice Age giant!

    Meanwhile, Arabella, growing increasingly frustrated with the male shenanigans, walked away into the heart of a blizzard and, seeking shelter, entered a cave. However, in that cave was an early man, probably Homo erectus or Homo Sapiens, warming himself by the fire, who got spooked on seeing the gigantic Arabella and screamed in fright. Hearing the hollering of the caveman, Oscar and Ormsby stopped their battle and jumped to the conclusion that it was Arabella who was screaming and that she was probably in great danger. They then helped each other make their way to the cave where the caveman was still hollering his lungs out, and poor Arabella was merely waiting for the man to calm himself down and realize that she was seeking shelter from the blizzard and that she meant him no harm. Still, to make a show of chivalry, Oscar and Ormsby threw hundreds of snowballs at the stunned caveman, burying the poor gentleman in a heap of snow, and then managed to cartwheel Arabella safely back to the herd. When they reached the herd, Oscar and Ormsby regaled the animal folk gathered there about their epic adventure, with Arabella keeping mum to allow the men to think that they had done something important for once. This helped because, inadvertently, both Oscar and Ormsby realized that they were a good team, and so they became the best of friends, along with Arabella, despite being quite different from each other. This is because to be friends, one need not have similar tastes, hobbies, talents, or looks, but a trio of friends is made up of those individuals who decide to stick together, always despite their many differences. That calls for acceptance, and Oscar ultimately managed to accept the strange ways of Ormsby. Soon, the duo became a trio of friends for life after the Ice Age.

    Book Analysis

    The main themes of this storybook, meant for the PYP or the students of the Primary Years Program of an IB or IGCSE school, will center around Prehistory, especially the Ice Age, as well as on the Wellbeing theme of friendship being the hallmark of acceptance. Through his comical squiggles and matted strokes, Neal Layton the illustrator has beautifully managed to create the furriness or hairiness of the giant Ice Age mammals in question which act as excellent tools for eliciting laughter from younger school students, especially during that time in the plot when Oscar and Ormsby started battling each other in a sort of fight to the finish. It can be helpful as a comical book to highlight the value of acceptance in friendship without the classroom atmosphere becoming too serious and quiet. It can be an excellent resource for the subject Unit of Inquiry (UOI) to teach the students the theme ‘Where We Are In Place And Time?’ especially interconnecting the last Ice Age with the continents that were formed later and the civilizations that came up from these various continents thereafter; not to mention the animals of the Ice Age that then went extinct at that time when the Earth started to get a bit warmer.

    Since the story is told in the form of a third-person narration, the PYP Storytelling teacher will find it challenging to recreate the humorous dialogues and the many ingenious voice characters that could have emerged through the telling of this unique story. Nevertheless, the main idea of the creator of this PYP book or a younger readers’ book was indeed to bring out the above-stated two main elements. There were, however, some inconsistencies in the book, which make it evident that when an illustrator or PYP author researches their material, they should do so with the utmost care. Here are a few of the inconsistencies that came up during my deep study of this book titled ‘Oscar and Arabella and Ormsby’ by author and illustrator Neal Layton.

    1. In the latter part of the story, both Oscar and Ormsby are said to have ‘tusks’ by the author. This would not be the case, as only Oscar would have tusks, while Ormsby, being a woolly rhinoceros, would only have one single large horn to battle against Oscar.

    2. In that same latter portion of the fight to the finish, both animals are said to have made the sound of a ‘trumpet’. This is incorrect again, as only Oscar, being a Woolly mammoth, would be able to make the sound of a ‘trumpet’ per se, while Ormsby, being a Woolly Rhino, would only be able to make a roar like most rhinos do today. Rhinos cannot trumpet because they do not have a snout like a mammoth or an elephant.

    3. There is a discoloration where the caveman is concerned in the illustration just before he gets covered from head to toe with snowballs. It seems like the illustrator wanted to draw an open mouth with two upper buck teeth or protruding teeth, but the result appears like two white buttons on a very queer looking mouth for a caveman.

    4. During the last Ice Age, archaeologists have led us to believe that the caveman roaming around was Neanderthal Man, who does not look a bit like the caveman depicted in the illustrations in the book ‘Oscar and Arabella and Ormsby’. He seems, moreover, like a homo erectus or homo sapiens proper, which is not historically correct again.

    5. When you observe closely the illustrations of Oscar compared to Arabella together, you realize that Oscar seems more like a mastodon or a stegodon ‘roofed tooth’ rather than a woolly mammoth. This is especially evident in the differences in size and shape of his tusks compared to Arabella’s. I presume this topic is covered in later or earlier books? However, the startling difference between the two mammoths is immediately apparent. Otherwise, the book was entertaining and beautifully done, worthy of the bronze Smarties Award won by the creator, Neal Layton.

    I loved this book, which I borrowed from my local lending library, so much that I wanted to present it at my PGCITE class at Podar International, Santacruz, during the first micro-teaching session. Unfortunately, another PGCITE student and colleague, Samira, chose it, naturally, because of how gorgeous the cover looked and the wonderful illustrations presented on the same cover of the book. Here are a few photographs of her demonstrating the story book titled ‘Oscar and Arabella and Ormsby’ at the first micro-teaching session of the January 2025 PGCITE class at Podar IB, Santacruz, under the supervision of Dr. Rekha Bajaj, our professor and guru:

    Samira presenting
    Samira presenting
    Samira presenting

    I instead presented another book to the class, namely ‘Dear Zoo’ by Rod Campbell, which you can check out on my blog here.

    Book Analysis Topics Under Consideration

    Prehistory and the Ice Age:

    The pre-eminent topic in this book, titled ‘Oscar and Arabella and Ormsby’, is about Neal Layton’s fascination with Prehistory, especially the life of the Earth during the last Ice Age. PYP or younger readers can easily be introduced to this topic through the book, which features glaciers, ice cliffs, pine forests, pine glades, and various Ice Age animals from the past, all of which are depicted throughout the book. Apart from Woolly Mammoths and Woolly rhinoceroses one can see polar bears, saber tooth tigers or an American scimitar cat (I think, but can’t be sure), Arctic foxes, reindeers, Irish Elk, dire wolves, giant beavers, tapir (I think, but I can’t be sure!), a bison or a musk ox (I think, but I can’t be sure yet again!), etc. The topic of the identity of Ice Age animals would motivate the PYP kids to conduct their own research, either with their parents or in their think-pair-share groups, which would be decided upon first by the PYP IGCSE or IB teacher.

    A drama or small play directed by the PYP teacher can be enacted by the students, with the characteristics of the animals in question being analyzed and their sounds or feeding habits imitated by the students themselves in different costumes. Then one can integrate the transdisciplinary theme of ‘Where We Are In Place And Time’ easily in the subject Unit of Inquiry (UOI) by naturally coming to the point when Homo Sapiens started roaming the Earth after Neanderthal man of the Ice Age and how we came to live in different types of houses rather than caves, etc.

    We can then determine to the PYP students that we certainly now are homo sapiens and the scientific proofs of the same through a study of our spinal column, backbone, the way we walk, our inventions, and how homo sapiens used past inventions or discoveries like fire, the wheel, speared weapons, etc. Then we could bring them to the present, where modern man has created marvels like rockets, satellites, AI, computers, the telephone, the Smartphone, the iPad, and probably the device on which they are studying their material, etc.

    This will be possible due to the thorough research conducted by Neal Layton in this book. Still, I’m sure in some instances he could have been a bit more careful with the details, knowing the PYP students of the third decade of the 21st century – they don’t let sleeping dogs lie; nor sleeping mammoths nor sleeping mastodons nor sleeping dire wolves nor sleeping Irish elks, et al.

    The topic about Global Warming and the current melting of the ice caps especially in the Arctic Region can bring in the subject of Global Perspectives where the student can analyze why current day polar animals like the polar bear, the reindeer, the artic fox, walruses, seals, penguins, etc., can lose their habitat to a more warmer and sans ice-cap planet in a matter of sadly five years from now. This will create awareness in them about losing habitats and the need to think long-term, rather than only focusing on the short term. I recall a good college friend of mine, Richard Cabral, once having a conversation with me about this topic. When I asked him about any government and their policies on global warming and measures to be taken, he said –

    ‘Fiza, when I say the government thinks short term in terms of managing global warming, I mean that it is a maximum of eight years for a US Presidency and a maximum of 10 years for an Indian Prime Minister to remain in office!’ – Richard Chris Cabral (Sociology Major Colleague at St. Andrews College Bandra West, Batch 2010)

    Luckily for India, we now have PM Modi with us, who is actively participating in addressing the global warming situation we are facing. However, like all environmental scientists globally, and especially in India, India was not one of the main reasons for the severity of this issue worldwide. It is unfortunate that our people, as well as the citizens of all developing countries, bear the brunt of the selfishness of the developed countries of the world. However, in the long run, we will devise a solution to this issue ourselves before it is too late.

    I’ve noticed that the creator of this book seems very fascinated with the prehistoric period of the Early World, especially during the last Ice Age. This is also evident in his Mammoth Academy books, which, as I mentioned earlier, are not yet available in India. However, they nevertheless indicate that the dissemination of knowledge about Prehistory and prehistoric man is something uppermost in the author’s mind.

    Acceptance In Friendship:

    When Oscar could not tolerate Ormsby because he could cartwheel better than Oscar or do handstands better than Oscar, they both started to battle each other. It was the common goal of saving Arabella from harm that made them set aside their differences and bound across a glacier with the help of Ormsby, then up an ice cliff with the help of Oscar, to save their best friend, Arabella. Where the first hurdle was concerned, Ormsby with his horn (not tusks!) cut down a pine tree to act as a bridge to allow the two woolly males to cross over a glacier. In contrast, in the second case, it was Oscar’s firm handstand that aided the otherwise wobbly Ormsby to climb the ice-cliff to the cave where Arabella was being spooked to death by a caveman.

    They saved her and, in turn, realized without much pomp and show that their differences made them inseparable as friends, and that is what counts in friendship: to accept everyone in the group for who they are and what they are, so long as no vulnerable individual or marginalized person is being hurt, especially no minor. One notices in the illustrations that, just like Oscar was Arabella’s special best friend, probably Ormsby would find a special best friend of his own, because Neal Layton drew a beautiful female woolly rhinoceros on the second-to-last page of the book. She was probably waiting for the charming and lively Ormsby to notice her presence.

    Albert Camus

    “Don’t walk in front of me … I may not follow

    Don’t walk behind me … I may not lead

    Walk beside me … just be my friend.”

    – Albert Camus (French writer and philosopher, and the Winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize for literature)

    We at the IBDP keep having to study the writings of Albert Camus, especially his existentialist works, and no wonder – he manages to define things as they should be, such as acceptance in friendship, as seen in the quote above. Like the vision of friendship that philosopher Albert Camus had in mind, Oscar, though doubtful of Ormsby, learnt to walk by his side and vice versa in a newfound friendship that did not rule or slave after, but worked side by side and hand in hand.

    Book Review

    I enjoyed this book. As I mentioned on my Goodreads page, this book came to me like a breath of fresh air at a particularly hectic time in my college career, around the middle of June 2025. I’m glad I chose it to read, savor, analyze, and share not only with my PGCITE colleagues but also with many 1st and 2nd grade students at the PYP at Podar IB, although informally so far. I hope to be allowed to tell a story like this one, done gorgeously by Neal Layton, soon.

    I’m sure Samira enjoyed analyzing it for her storytelling session at the beginning of the micro-teaching class, just before we could present our first micro-teaching lesson to Dr. Rekha Bajaj, also known as Rekha Ma’am, at the PGCITE course at Podar IB, Santacruz. Here are a few more photographs of the storytelling session and analysis that took place over a period of three days.

    I provided all the books from my Born to Read Tuition Library for the whole class (which was a pleasure!), which you can see the PGCITE students of Jan Batch 2025 perusing through. You can’t see me because I’m always behind the camera 24/7!

    My Born To Read Tuition Books being used for the StoryTelling Session
    Another look at my books being presented and displayed
    [Left to Right] Mehek, Harshada, Ruchita, Ambili and Minal
    Samira looking for more books to read and review
    [Left to Right] Barkha, Ambili and Harshada
    [Left to Right] Yoshi and Maitri
    Maitri like me is a great fan of Dr. Seuss
    Rashmi perusing through the books on display
    [Left to Right] Yoshi and Ruchita reading away!
    Rekha Ma’am [extreme right] teaching us about the importance of reading

    If you like the photographs and videos taken on this blog and website of our lively classes, then you know who to thank! I used to love videography and photography as a 1990s kid with my Kodak cameras – that is why taking photographs and videos comes naturally to me. It helps me greatly as an indie writer of over 20 multiple-award-winning books.

    Fiza Pathan’s Born to Read Tuition Library

    The last photograph is of my Born to Read Tuition Library, which contains books that I have bought, cherished, and shared with my tuition students in the previous 13 years, and which I shared for the first time with the Podar IB PGCITE students of the January 2025 batch.

    I found the book ‘Oscar and Arabella and Ormsby’ to be a fun read with wonderfully drawn squiggles that captured my imagination, and which immediately made me remember that ‘Rover’ book by Michael Rosen, and then I managed to make the connection with Neal Layton. Brilliant, artistic, entertaining, informative, and funny are the terms I would use to describe this book by Neal Layton.

    Conclusion

    I hope to read, re-read, analyze, and review more PYP books in the coming days and weeks. If you liked my analysis of ‘Oscar and Arabella and Ormsby’ by Neal Layton, please feel free to send a message, and I’ll respond in the comment section of this blog. I also hope to read, review, and analyze some more history-themed works for the PYP, MYP, IGCSE, and IBDP sections in the coming days and weeks. Stay tuned! If you are a colleague from the PGCITE course and would like to share some of your photographs, videos, or messages with me, please feel free to do so in this message box. I’ll approve and respond to your comment publicly.

    Special Note

    If you are interested in more book reviews, indie author interviews, book analyses, short story analyses, poems, essays, essay analyses, and other bookish content, check out my blog, insaneowl.com. If you are interested in purchasing my books, you can visit the products page on my blog or check them on Amazon. There’s a lot of great stuff to buy! Happy reading to you always!

    ©2025 Fiza Pathan

  • ‘Dear Zoo’ by Rod Campbell: Book Review

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    Title of the Book: Dear Zoo

    Author: Rod Campbell

    Publisher: Little Simon – Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

    Publication Year: 1982

    Pages: 16 pages

    ISBN: 978-1-4169-4737-0

    Age Group: PYP (Grades 1 & 2)

    Genre: Animal Stories

    Type: Board Book/A Lift the Flap Book

    IBDP & IGCSE Subjects Covered: English, Reading & Library Class

    Review Written By: Fiza Pathan

    Introduction

    Rod Campbell, the creator of this extraordinary 20th-century young reader’s classic book titled ‘Dear Zoo’, is a remarkable figure in juvenile fiction. His upbringing in Zimbabwe and his subsequent return to Britain, where he completed a doctorate in organic chemistry, shaped his unique approach to children’s publishing. In 1980, he began designing innovative books with interactive elements and repetitive phrases, like the ones contained in this board book of his titled ‘Dear Zoo’.

    In 1987, he founded Campbell Blackie Books in partnership with his publisher Blackie. Campbell Books (as it became in 1989) was sold in 1995 to Macmillan Publishers. He then published several books, but his ‘Dear Zoo’ remains an eternal bestseller even after more than 30 years since its first publication in 1982.

    The book is a lift-the-flap book revealing to the reader, or rather the younger reader, various fascinating animals, reptiles, birds, etc., which would delight and mesmerize. It would also educate, edify, and most importantly, entertain a younger reader in the PYP sections of an IB or IGCSE school for hours together, if not months and years. With a variety of noteworthy adjectives to add to the PYP student’s vocabulary, ‘Dear Zoo’, created by Rod Campbell, is a captivating book that can seduce any young student into the charming world of reading. There is no way a PYP of an IB or IGCSE school can go wrong if they choose ‘Dear Zoo’ by Rod Campbell to read to their students.

    Using minimalistic artwork, catchy adjective phrases, and simplistic yet evocative artwork, along with an intriguing and well-designed lift-the-flap, Rod Campbell, the author of this book, manages to feed the fancies of little PYP or Primary Years Programme students. There is no way one can get bored reading this book. Additionally, this book can be an excellent resource for storytelling sessions in a PYP Library Class or Period, or in a Classroom Reading Session, which are some of the best parts of my work and internship at Podar IB, Santacruz.

    For a bustling reading life that is nurtured here at Podar IB or Podar International School, Santacruz under the guidance and leadership of Dr. Vandana Lulla – Director and Principal at Podar International School, lift-the-flap books like ‘Dear Zoo’ can be an excellent addition to the PYP library and the interactive reading and storytelling sessions conducted there. Revered Dr. Vandana Lulla, like most leading educationists of International Schools worldwide, is known in Mumbai to be a pioneer of instilling in her students a love for reading, turning every Podar IB student into a voracious reader right from the time they are in the 1st grade in the PYP. It is important to note that she never compromises on this aspect for anything because she believes in the dictum:

    ‘A student who reads is a leader who leads.’

    The above is a tweaking of two quotes, one by President Harry S. Truman and another by Greek Philosopher Plato, as follows:

    “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” ― Harry S. Truman (33rd President of the United States of America)

    “Today Learner is Tomorrow Leader.’“― Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher and Student of Socrates)

    It is impossible to survive in an IB or IGCSE curriculum without inculcating within oneself a constant habit of reading, and this is something that Dr. Vandana Lulla is quite firm about at her school. To inculcate her almost evangelical zeal for this particular accomplishment in every Primary School-going child, books like ‘Dear Zoo’ by Rod Campbell should be added to IB and IGCSE libraries across not only India but the world. With the aid of a very lively, professional and interactive story-teller cum PYP Library or Reading Class teacher, this book can encourage students to engage with more books which will in turn build up their vocabulary, their creativity especially in reading, writing and speaking not to mention in their overall EQ or Emotional Quotient as they dwell upon the appropriate adjectives attached to every animal, reptile or amphibian contained in this vibrant but yet compact board book.

    In this book analysis, I shall dwell on the many concepts that a PYP student in an IB or IGCSE school can glean and learn from ‘Dear Zoo’, especially through constant reading, re-reading, and storytelling sessions at a PYP school library. Also, I will be dealing with the various nuances hidden within this otherwise simplistic book, which would have gone past any other speed-reader, but not me! Rod Campbell seems to be a very remarkable person, and I hope to read and savour more books by him.

    Summary

    A little child, whose gender has not been specified to create inclusion at the beginning of this book, starts writing a series of letters to a particular zookeeper in the area. The child is keen on getting a pet from the zoo, but alas, the zoo seemed a bit confused about the nature of the inquiry. They initially assume that the writer of the letter is an adult and is keen to gain a pet or an exotic and strange pet from the zoo. Remember, this is the year 1982, when Pop celebrities like Michael Jackson were taking in chimpanzees and pythons as pets without anyone batting an eyelid. Similarly, other elitist and upper-middle-class Britishers were keen on having some intriguing pets in their menagerie. This British Zoo, therefore, did not bother with the nitty gritty of the plea but at once began sending off animals in different-sized crates, boxes, cages, etc., to the child’s residence day by day. First, an Elephant was sent in a huge yellow crate, which the child refused because the elephant seemed to be too big. Then a Giraffe was sent in a tall green crate after the elephant was sent back, but the child rejected the tall animal as well because it was simply too tall. After sending the Giraffe back, the zookeeper sent the child a lion in a red cage, which the child obviously rejected because the animal was too fierce for his tastes. The lion was taken back, and then a grumpy camel in a blue crate was delivered to the boy, whom the boy in turn rejected because the creature seemed too grumpy. The list goes on as next in line a snake was sent in a coir basket, a mischievous rhesus monkey in a yellow box, and then a frog in a tiny pink cardboard box with holes – all of them were, in their turn, rejected by the boy. They were rejected because they were too scary, mischievous, and jumpy, respectively. Lastly, after having exhausted their resources, it finally occurred to the zoo keeper and his staff that the picky writer of this letter must be a little child and not an eccentric adult looking for an exotic pet to add to their menagerie. They therefore finally send a lovely brown little puppy to the child in a pet doggy basket-cage, which the child readily accepts at last. Thus, the story ends with the child happy with their new pet, and the staff at the nearby zoo were at last glad to get rid of their unusual pesky customer. Yet they managed to be of service to the child, though they had to do so at their own cost.

    Analysis

    There are a few nuances in this PYP Animal Story book that one cannot miss if one studies the text carefully enough. Here are a few of the important points that a reader, or an IGCSE or IB PYP teacher, can glean from the book:

    1. The Zoo Keepers and the Staff at the Zoo:

    We notice in this text that the zookeeper and their staff were not at all perturbed about sending an otherwise wild animal to the writer of the letter as a pet. This, as mentioned before, was a time before stringent measures were passed in this regard and before the incarceration of animals from the wild as pets was banned altogether. Animals from the wild would be hunted and sold in crates, much like non-living things, to various parts of the world for trade and export purposes. It was the easiest thing at that time to procure a wild animal in this way, even Gerald Durrell of the ‘My Family and Other Animals’ Series fame procured his own zoo animals in the same manner as he has stated in his book series and BBC interviews. Such animals were brutalized, ill-treated, and at times severely maimed while travelling from country to country or even crossing oceans and continents, going towards England or North America, where there would be some eccentric millionaire takers for such denizens of the wild. Therefore, the zookeepers and staff were not perturbed when they were asked for an exotic or wild animal ‘pet’. That they did not verify the real identity of the letter’s writer suggests either carelessness or a common practice until the 1990s, when the UNO finally cracked down on the export and trafficking of wild animals. A good story-narrator IB or IGCSE PYP teacher can, through some comic gestures and comments, easily alert the PYP students to this element in the story. They can indicate to the child that the zookeepers were so hasty and caught up in their work that they forgot to fact-check the identity of the writer of this letter. Later, a series of letters complaining about the size, temperament, activities, etc., of the animals were sent. The teacher could point out how foolish they were. Only after the return of the jumpy frog did it finally occur to them that the mysterious writer of the letter must be a child. Instead of writing to the pet shop, the child wrote to the zoo in naivety. But the zookeepers had a heart and were a kindly lot, not to mention patient. They always wanted to ensure the customer or patron was served. Since they finally knew they were dealing with a child in the PYP, they spent a few pounds out of their own pocket to get the child the animal it desired —a small, friendly puppy. They thus proved that they were efficient and catered to their clients even in unusual circumstances. A great PYP storyteller teacher during the Library or Reading periods could recreate the pushing, pulling and extra hard work of the zoo keepers and staff trying to shove a huge elephant in huge yellow crate, or the camel in the tall and broad blue crate or the ferocious lion in the red cage all huffing and puffing and sweating it out comically while it was all being done, and then being told that the letter writer rejected the fruit of their hard work and wished for another contender as a pet. This would seem very comical to demonstrate in a storytelling manner rather than just concentrating on the mammals, reptiles, and amphibians in question.

    2. Adjectives Used:

    Notice the intention of the creator of this book, Rod Campbell, in wanting to enhance further the PYP students’ knowledge of how to use adjectives to describe the animals, reptiles, or amphibians in this story titled ‘Dear Zoo’. Using the appropriate adjectives is a key topic used right from the PYP in an IGCSE and IB English curriculum to enhance essay writing capabilities, especially narrative writing, descriptive writing, and persuasive writing. The following is the list of adjectives that have been used in this story:

    1) Big for the Elephant

    2) Tall for the Giraffe

    3) Fierce for the Lion

    4) Grumpy for the Camel

    5) Scary for the Snake

    6) Naughty for the Monkey

    7) Jumpy for the frog

    They are all, as you can see, very elementary adjectives perfect for introducing a 1st grade PYP student to the world of literature, reading, and basic grammar. They thus learn the descriptions and main points or characteristics of the animals in question. For example, the Giraffe is a tall animal, while the elephant is a large one. The snake is poisonous and hisses frighteningly, making it scary. In contrast, the frog hops from place to place, making it jumpy. A good Science PYP teacher can further enhance this if the topic is studied in the senior PYP classes in the topic ‘Classification of Animals’, especially into Domestic and Wild Animals, and which of the animals can be both. In that topic, the characteristics of the animals can be studied as well as the general features and functions of mammals, reptiles, and amphibians.

    3. Domestic and Wild Animals:

    Here is a list of the animals in this book titled ‘Dear Zoo’ by Rod Campbell that can be considered as primarily wild animals who technically cannot be tamed:

    1) Elephant

    2) Giraffe

    3) Lion

    4) Snake

    5) Monkey

    6) Frog

    The following is a list of those animals that can be termed as domestic animals because they can be tamed easily compared to the others:

    1) Elephant

    2) Camel

    3) Puppy

    Please note that, however, all animals mentioned in this book, if reared by humans right from the time of their infancy in captivity, can all become tame and friendly to humans, including the lion and the snake. Maybe videos from Animal Planet, especially from the famous The Crocodile Hunter and The Crocodile Hunter Diaries (1996 – 2007), The Jeff Corwin Experience (2000-2003) and the Wild Kingdom (revived in the early 2000s) of the early 2000s can be shown to the IB PYP students to indicate the same and increase their knowledge about conservation and the importance of reserved habitats and reintroducing animals into the wild.

    This may encourage students in higher classes to research the ill effects of reintroducing captive-raised animals into the wild. In tackling this issue, they may develop innovative solutions that are currently in high demand worldwide. The PYP IB student or PYP IGCSE student can then research further into the different types of snakes, frogs, camels, etc., that can make for an enjoyable experience. For example, there are two types of camels in the world: a Bactrian Camel and a Dromedary camel. The Dromedary is the Arabian Camel, which has only one hump, while the Bactrian Camel has two humps. There are two types of snakes in the world: poisonous ones and non-poisonous ones, also known as constrictors. Poisonous snakes, such as the Cobra, King Cobra, Rattlesnake, and Viper, are characterized by their venom. In contrast, constrictors are non-poisonous snakes that suffocate their prey by crushing their bones. Some examples of constrictors are the python, the yellow boa constrictor, and the Anaconda. Poisonous snakes, such as cobras and certain mambas, have large and prominent hoods with speckled bands, whereas constrictors don’t.

    4. The Identification of the Animals and the Lift-the-Flap Thrill:

    This book can easily be a child’s favourite because it allows the child to experience the thrill of the surprise whenever the child lifts the ingenious flaps of the various baskets, crates, cages, boxes, etc., to reveal an animal, reptile, or amphibian enclosed within. The actual name of the creature is not given in the book; instead, the colourful picture of it prompts the child to utter the name and identify it or them for themselves. This is excellent reinforcement, particularly for PYP or Kindergarten students, presented in a fun way to learn the various names of animals, their descriptions, and their sounds. A good PYP storyteller teacher in the Library or Reading period can imitate the various sounds made by the animals in question for the students, or maybe ask the students themselves to mimic the sounds created by these animals every time the story is told and the flaps are lifted page by page. It would be very tricky for a child to especially imitate the ‘sound’ made by a giraffe or a camel, because usually they have never heard these creatures ever really make a noise. For the reader’s information, the Giraffe makes grunting and snorting noises, while the camel makes a sort of humph sound, as if it is disgusted with someone perpetually! That could make for more funny reading than the usual lion’s roar or the elephant’s trumpet sound. Here is the list of the sounds made by the animals in this book titled ‘Dear Zoo’ for a reader’s reference:

    1) Elephant – Trumpet Sound

    2) Giraffe – Grunting and Snorting Sound (Like you’ve got a bad cold!)

    3) Lion – Roar

    4) Camel – Humph (Like you are annoyed!)

    5) Snake – Hissss

    6) Monkey – Oh-Oh-Ah-Ah (typically like the wild pant hoots of an overactive chimpanzee and their wild cackling!)

    7) Frog – Ribbet

    8) Puppy – Cute bark or woof

    Book Review

    The book was ingenious, captivating, and thrilling, providing a positive and educational experience that can be a great learning experience for not only PYP students but also PYP IB and PYP IGCSE teachers. This book is enriching, especially in the context of subjects like the Library Period and the Reading Period. In the latter, students can easily express their final reflections, which can help them learn basic sequencing and improve their memory and retentive skills. We are officially living in a world where school students especially right until the MYP or Middle Years Programme are unawares about how to retain the information they have learnt at school or from their textbooks leading them to be absolute beginners according to the IDEA Students Theory of the IB and IGCSE right till the time they reach the IGCSE level which is concerning.

    This can be tackled, especially with constant reading and re-reading of sequence-based books in English like ‘Dear Zoo’ by Rod Campbell. In the Reading Class, one can use a lot of Higher Level Questions and Encourage Critical Thinking among the students especially about the theme of conservation and animal rights throughout the last decade of the 1990s, the early 2000s and now in the current Post-Truth Era where we are in danger of probably losing more species in a single decade than we’ve lost in over 5 centuries! Topics about reserved forests and their pros and cons can be tackled or at least discussed if there are too many Emerging Learners or Absolute Beginners in the classroom, which has sadly become an everyday scenario everywhere you go.

    We need to help PYP students overcome the hurdles of the Post-Truth Era and the AI Age before they are deemed unfit even to handle the computer-run machines their ancestors had made. This is important for our future generations as much as spotting geniuses in the class, because, as Albert Einstein once said:

    ‘The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.’ ― Albert Einstein (German-born theoretical physicist and Globally Acclaimed Super-Genius)

    ‘Dear Zoo’ is an engaging book that can be read and dwelt on by the students themselves once the main storytelling session is done during the Reading Period. Questions can be appropriately tailored to the suggested theme, and Think-Pair-Share Group Discussions can be conducted to reflect on the animals that resonate with the children individually.

    On a personal note, the book was motivating, engaging, entertaining, and informative. It was beautifully illustrated, and it influenced me to such an extent that I even used it during the Storytelling Session at my PGCITE Course while we were studying the major topic, namely, Micro-Teaching. I narrated this entire story to my Professor, Dr. Rekha Bajaj, as well as my Class of PGCITE students (January 2025 Batch) at Podar International School (Podar IB) in an interactive manner, which I usually do while telling stories to PYP students, for which I was applauded. I also analyzed the story titled ‘How The Grinch Stole Christmas’ by Dr. Seuss in the class before I went for a Proxy Class to teach the MYP Grade 7. I had analyzed Rod Campbell’s book as well along with the help of my PGCITE colleagues and especially with the help of Rekha Ma’am or Dr. Rekha Bajaj who in turn gave me a lot of tips about how this book could be perfect for being used in sequencing topics not only in PYP Mathematics but also PYP English. It was the PGCITE student Rashmi who noted during my presentation the excellent use of adjectives by Rod Campbell and drew my attention to the same. Here are the photographs of that first session in Micro-Teaching:

    Conclusion

    All in all, a well-planned book with the aim achieved to perfection. I look forward to reading more books by Rod Campbell soon, though I am aware that nothing can compare to his evergreen classic ‘Dear Zoo’, which has sold over 2 million copies worldwide. The book is part of the Dear Zoo and Friends Series, which contains another book titled ‘Look After Us’, a lift-the-flap animal book for toddlers and PYP students with a positive message about conservation, which can be very effective. It can be a perfect sequel to ‘Dear Zoo’ any day! I also hope to read, review, and analyze more PYP books in the coming days and weeks.

    Special Note

    If you are interested in more book reviews, indie author interviews, book analyses, short story analyses, poems, essays, essay analyses, and other bookish content, check out my blog, insaneowl.com. If you are interested in purchasing my books, you can check the products page of my blog or on Amazon. There is a lot of good stuff to buy! Happy reading to you always!

    ©2025 Fiza Pathan

  • ‘Squiggly Goes to School’ by Deepa Agarwal: Book Review

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    Title of the Book: Squiggly Goes to School

    Author: Deepa Agarwal

    Publisher: Frank Educational Aids Pvt. Ltd.

    Publication Year: 1996 (Reprint 2001)

    Kindle Edition ASIN: B08FLCR8QW

    Pages: 14 pages

    ISBN: 9788173790430

    Age Group: PYP (Grades 1 & 2)

    Genre: 20th Century Contemporary Indian Animal Stories

    IBDP & IGCSE Subjects Covered: English & Reading

    Review Written By: Fiza Pathan

    Introduction

    This book was one of my favorites while I was a kid studying in the primary section at Bombay Scottish School ICSE, Mahim. I got it way back in 1996, the year it was first published, and I could never get enough of it. Of course, I did not buy the book myself; probably my younger maternal uncle, Blaise, or my mother had purchased it for me to improve my reading skills and to instill in me the habit of reading.

    What I am getting at is that my family members did not know that I already had a formidably incredible capacity and capability to read almost anything and everything in printed form. In the year 1996, I was in the 2nd grade. By the following year, in the 3rd grade, I would graduate to reading unabridged classics like Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’, Charles Dicken’s ‘David Copperfield’, ‘Tales of Mystery and Terror’ by Edgar Allan Poe, ‘Little Women’ by Louisa May Alcott, ‘The Secret Garden’ by Frances Hodgson Burnett, ‘Black Beauty’ by Anna Sewell, ‘The Jungle Book’ by Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ by Alexandre Dumas, The Complete Short Stories of O. Henry, The Collected Works of Hubert Crackanthorpe, ‘Kidnapped’ by Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘The Red Badge of Courage’ by Stephen Crane, ‘The Time Machine’ by H.G. Wells, ‘Around the World In 80 Days’ by Jules Verne and much more. All of these, mind you, only in the unabridged form or the original form intended for adults.

    As you can see, the list indicates that I was not exactly what a 3rd grade student in primary school should have been. Probably when I managed to finish reading this PYP book titled ‘Squiggly Goes to School’ by Indian contemporary writer Deepa Agarwal in less than half an hour fluently back in the year 1996, that should have indicated to my large maternal and much-preoccupied family about my incredible verbal-linguistic skills. Instead, the family only realized that I had finished the book a week later, and my workaholic mother started grumbling about how I was wasting time reading when I should be concentrating on my studies, especially Math, my perpetual bête noire. Probably, if they had paid a bit of attention to my extraordinary Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence under the IB and IGCSE topic of Howard Gardener’s Multiple Intelligences Theory, I would not have grown up into middle age thinking that I was below average in studies because I never could understand Math.

    Perhaps I would have then taken the chance and gotten an IQ Test done for myself when the opportunity arose, both in school and in my first year at my favorite St. Andrew’s College, Bandra West. Then, I probably would have realized that my IQ score was 133 and that it did not matter whether I was not very good at Math and physics; that was certainly not the end of the world. The fact is, it was only recently that I took an IQ test for the first time in 36 years, and I scored 133, landing in the Highly Gifted Category, just below Einstein’s IQ range (145 to 150 and above).

    This is what Perplexity AI has to say about an IQ Score of 133:

    An IQ score of 133 places an individual well above the average range and falls into the “Very Superior” or “Gifted” category, depending on the classification system used.

    On the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), a score of 130 and above is classified as “Very Superior”.

    On the Stanford–Binet scale, a score between 130 and 144 is considered “Gifted or very advanced”.

    Other systems, such as the Woodcock-Johnson, also label scores above 131 as “Very Superior.“

    In terms of population percentile, an IQ of 133 puts someone in roughly the top 2% of test takers, meaning they score higher than about 98% of the population. This level of intelligence is associated with advanced reasoning, problem-solving, and pattern recognition skills, and individuals in this range often excel academically and professionally in intellectually demanding fields.

    In summary, an IQ score of 133 is considered “Very Superior” or “Gifted” and represents exceptionally high cognitive ability compared to the general population.

    If only I had seen this when I was a child at school, I would not have grown up being introverted, reclusive, shy, perpetually ashamed of my lack of spatial skills about hypothetical questions in Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry and would have probably by now been much more than just a professional high-school teacher, international author of 24 books, multiple-award-winning writer and journalist, a compulsive blogger of free educational content, a director of my own niche publishing company, a budding professional Catholic Theologian and now a soon to be professional IB and IGCSE trained teacher. I could have done much more if someone had taken more careful notice of the way I did things. In hindsight, I now realize that the signs were more than just evident when I was reading this 1996 illustrated PYP or Primary Years Program book titled ‘Squiggly Goes to School’ based on the life of a laid-back primary school worm called Squiggly who loved to oversleep way past his morning alarm for school and used to always be up to some mischief or the other until his misadventures in naughtiness would backfire upon himself.

    In another year after dear old Squiggly, the lazy school-going and playful worm, I would graduate to the classic vampire of Gothic fiction, Count Dracula. I would never need to read my classics or any books from the 3rd grade in the abridged form or in a form adapted for ‘younger readers’ or ‘juvenile readers’. Such books bored me, and I only preferred reading, enjoying, and savoring unabridged classics in their original form. At that time, I was also preparing for the Sacrament of Holy Communion, so I would read and re-read the Holy Bible from cover to cover. I finished with an abridged copy of the Bible, which I still possess today, gifted to me by my 3rd grade class teacher, Mrs. Leena Ignatius, from Bombay Scottish School, Mahim. I then began reading the King James Version at school and later the Good News Bible, which belonged to my elder maternal uncle, David Martis (known as David Uncle), back at home. I fancied the King James Bible back then more; it sounded quite serious and strict to me, and I was sadly unaware that I was not meant to read that particular copy of the Bible per se.

    But returning to the topic at hand, it would have been better if I had been recognized for who I was as a person and student, with my own set of unusual capabilities, rather than being always ordered to fit into a mold that defined other logical and mathematically inclined students in my school at Scottish. It was like I was a fish being only perpetually tested on my ability to climb a tree all the time – every time. That was not fair at all, and it is certainly not fair for any other student following the IGCSE and IB curriculum. Where the IB and IGCSE curriculum is concerned, we follow the idea given to us by Dr. Howard Gardner of the Multiple Intelligences fame, who indicated to the world that a student does not learn in only one particular way but technically in 9 ways going up to sometimes 11 ways, which he defined as the 11 Different Types of Multiple Intelligences. He taught us that every child is unique and learns differently, possessing a distinct set of skills and intelligences. Therefore, every child is intelligent and should never be typecast into stereotypical categories selected by so-called well-meaning but highly narrow-minded adults.

    Through the PYP book penned by multiple-award-winning author and poet Deepa Agarwal of the ‘Caravan to Tibet’ fame, I will, in this book review and analysis, analyze the book through the lens of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences as evaluated and applied in the IB and IGCSE curriculum and way of teaching International Students of the IB Board.

    Summary

    Squiggly the Worm was a primary school student studying underground amid an American grassland back in the 1990s. His bedroom was always a mess, but it was styled in the typical 1990s school kid way. He would always oversleep beyond the ringing of his school alarm clock and, therefore, would always be late for school. One day, his teacher, Ms. Rat, decided that enough was enough and that the tardy and callous Squiggly had to be taught a lesson in manners and punctuality. This was when I was growing up when teachers still had the right to correct and advise students through harmless corrective measures. In today’s day and age, such a teacher would be immediately dismissed from her job. Ms. Rat declared to Squiggly that he was yet again late for school and her class, which she would no longer tolerate. Therefore, he would have to spend the rest of the school day in the corridor as a corrective measure to ensure that he would at last realize the seriousness of his misdemeanor. Squiggly was disappointed in being asked to leave the class and spend the rest of his time in the school corridor, but then he thought of a bright idea to entertain himself (at least for him). Although the year 1996 predates the advent of ChatGPT, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, and others, this particular method of entertaining oneself to avoid boredom remains a common practice in schools worldwide. This activity is simply called ‘tearing pages from one’s precious books and making paper planes to irritate passers-by with’ in a nutshell. Squiggly tore page after page of one of his school textbooks and made hundreds of paper planes to play with until he had ripped his whole textbook empty. When he realized his book was now devoid of any pages and that it happened to be one of his homeroom teacher’s, Ms. Rat’s most important subject, he became as white as a sheet with the realization. In his panic, he escaped to the ground surface of the American grassland through an underground tunnel to escape the vengeful spirit of his furry teacher. In the bargain, he felt extremely hot and started to sweat due to the intense heat of the sun. After all, he was a worm, and worms only emerged from the underground tunnels of their subterranean home when the rains began to fall upon the Earth. As he sweated his way along the dry ground path, Chik-Chik, the baby Sparrow who had just learned how to fly and hunt his meals, spotted Squiggly. Chik-Chik was diving in to catch Squiggly, which he easily did, but the shrewd and smart alec Squiggly outsmarted Chik-Chik by compelling Chik-Chik to speak, thus, opening the latter’s beak from which Squiggly fell out at once. He then scuttled hastily back underground before Chik-Chik realized what Squiggly had made him do and returned to the safety of his family home and his messy 1990s bedroom, wherein contained his basketball, school backpack, his story books on a tiny bookshelf, his radio, his school awards, his school notebooks, posters of his drawings, his cricket bat, school papers scattered all about, etc. He was unremorseful about the happenings of the day but was nevertheless glad that he arrived safely at home.

    Analysis

    Taking Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences into consideration, we notice a few things from this adventurous contemporary Indian animal story set in an otherwise very American grassland as interpreted by the illustrator of this book.

    Kinesthetic Intelligence

    We notice that Squiggly’s teacher, Ms. Rat, tended to teach her students using the simple blackboard and chalk method, thereby always catering to only those students who had very prominent Verbal-Linguistic skills of Intelligence, Logical-Mathematical skills of Intelligence, and Spatial or Visual Skills of Intelligence. She followed the traditional teaching classroom environment, which Howard Gardner specifically critiqued for its lack of imagination, its limited elucidation of capabilities, and its highly stereotyped and static atmosphere.

    Probably, this was the reason why Squiggly the Worm was not interested in his studies at all because this style of teaching and studying did not appeal to or match his own way of learning and studying, which utilized his unique set of multiple intelligences. From the plot of the story, the characterization, and the illustrations of various scenes, one can gain insight into the personality of the worm Squiggly and, in a way, identify his multiple intelligences and how he would approach his studies if given a chance.

    From the number of basketballs, toy blocks, cricket bats, and male dolls in his messy room, one realizes that Squiggly was a student who seemed to have a lot of interest in activities that kept him moving all the time and about the place. He seemed to be very good, especially with his hands (or rather his tail, which acted like a single strong hand per se) and not particularly his legs – that is obvious because worms don’t have legs (just a propelling extended tail region but that is mainly to give the worm a push forward while the strong muscles all over the rest of the body make the worm move forwards and backward)! But an implicit indication of the same would be in connection to the fact that the sports goods in the messy and disorganized room were all related to the sportsperson using his ‘hands’ and majorly his ‘upper torso’ for playing the game along with the lower half of the body; the primary focus is but on the proficiency of the sportsperson’s hands, example: for cricket, basketball, volleyball, etc.

    This indicates that Squiggly would have fared better in a learning environment where he could experience most of his learning through various activities, games, movements, hands-on activities, tasks, building assignments, etc. This was because it was evident that Squiggly the Worm was highly overactive and liked doing things with his hands, or in this context, his single tail or extended part. This is evident in his pulling out sheets of paper from his teacher’s textbook and making multiple paper planes out of them without a care for the consequences. Therefore, Squiggly clearly demonstrates that he is a kinesthetic learner with Kinesthetic Intelligence, which falls under the Interactive Category of Multiple Intelligences.

    He is very athletic for a worm, and though Chik-Chik caught him to eat for his dinner, through his stealthy cunning, Squiggly managed to escape Chik-Chik’s clutches and scoot quickly back to his underground and safe world. This is another obvious sign of a student with Kinesthetic Intelligence. Probably when Ms. Rat was teaching her students the concept or new word of cat, she could have done so by asking the students to imitate the sound a cat makes or to imitate the way a cat acts when it is hungry, angry, or fearful in a group activity or even if she asked an athletic student like Squiggly to make a clay model of a cat or a chart depicting the various elements related to the animal called a cat with pictures, content, etc., cut out by the PYP homeroom teacher or the assistant teacher and done with the aforementioned in a group activity. It would have certainly been better for the highly active Squiggly than merely drawing a chalk image of a cat on the blackboard and writing down the word ‘CAT’ in capital letters upon the same.

    In the latter, she focused only on learners who were skilled in Verbal-Linguistic Elements or had a Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence. She was otherwise also only concentrating on those learners who had Logical-Mathematical Intelligence and Visual-Spatial Intelligence, as depicted by the drawing on the blackboard and the fact that every other child in the class recognized that the animal on the board was a cat.

    However, the point is that a student is not merely defined by one kind of Intelligence Learning Skill but is comprised of several Multiple Intelligences, all unique to them. Squiggly the Worm, too, has quite a bit of his own form of verbal-linguistic intelligence, which will be analyzed as follows:

    Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence

    If one observes Squiggly’s 1990s-themed bedroom, one notices a sizeable bookshelf opposite his bed stacked with books galore, though not in order and quite in a state of chaos. There were schoolbooks and storybooks on the floor of his room, and school papers were scattered all about, making his room seem like a bomb site. However, this gives the reader insight into the illustrator’s perspective, showing that Squiggly enjoyed reading. He read not only his schoolbooks but also plenty of storybooks and nonfiction titles, which in the 1990s would be termed encyclopedias.

    So it is not that he did not have superior or at least more than average reading, studying, writing, speaking, listening, and language art skills; it is just that because of his more over-active side to himself or because of his powerful Kinesthetic Intelligence or capabilities, he tended to not do so well in a traditional schoolroom setting. Usually, Verbal-Linguistic Learners are ideal for a traditional classroom setting like the ones found during the 1990s; they are generally termed as the ‘model students’ by prejudiced and ill-informed teachers who only perceive mathematical and linguistic intelligence to be the prime indicators of a student who is worthy of taking note of in the class.

    I can, in a way, see that Squiggly would probably have, in the end, taken up a job where he had to write, speak, converse, and read a lot but where he also had to run around a lot (if worms run around, that is!). I could not see him as a potential paperback writer, but instead, he would have made an excellent journalist or an onsite news reporter. I envision him being brilliant in creative fields related to advertising, public speaking, linguistics, travel blogging, and so on, anything where verbal linguistics can intersect with kinesthetic intelligence.

    We see his excellent and witty use of verbal-linguistic skills in the way he outsmarted Chik-Chik by compelling the young bird to open its beak. He did this by exclaiming that Chik-Chik’s beak was too sharp. The vain young bird tried to immediately negate Squiggly by shouting the word ‘never’ at him several times emphatically, but obviously in the bargain, letting Squiggly go free and out of the clutches of his beak. The excellent use of his speaking and verbal skills is evident in this case, as it gives us an opportunity to witness his very colorful imagination, which could easily do a lot of magic with the written word.

    Initially, in his Primary School Years at any IB or IGCSE school (PYP), Squiggly would have learned more through the skills of his kinesthetic intelligence. However, later, from the IGCSE or IB Diploma Programme (IBDP) or A-Levels onwards, I can picture him settling into a more verbal-linguistic format for learning. It could even have happened as early as the MYP before the Secondary Checkpoint Exam, and what more does a sincere IB and IGCSE teacher need than seeing their pupil evolve intelligently through the many different ways they learn?

    Notice also in Squiggly’s room, a radio sits on top of the bookshelf, not a Television, the famous, eternal ‘idiot box’ of the 1990s kid until the arrival of the desktop computer, which made the 1990s even more magical! This indicates further that he was more of a listener than a visual learner. I’m sure more than 1990s Pop Music or Michael Jackson, Backstreet Boys, and NSYNC music numbers, Squiggly would have been listening to a lot of sports commentaries day in and day out, especially cricket game commentaries or test match commentaries by some of his favorite sports commentators in the business. Listening is a key Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence learning skill that is essential to truly being called a student who has the ‘gift of the gab’ and ‘has a way with his words’.

    Visual-Spatial Intelligence

    This is not prominent in the life of Squiggly, neither in the plot of the text nor in the illustrations of this PYP book titled ‘Squiggly Goes to School’ by famous Indian author of repute and ace poet Deepa Agarwal. However, the fact that Squiggly liked to draw and paint pictures and paste these pictures as posters on his typical 1990s bedroom walls shows that he was artistic in a way and also enjoyed seeing what he was learning rather than merely memorizing a particular topic or concept. He, therefore, can learn visually, but it will have to be something done more dramatically to elicit some response from him. Thus, a student like Squiggly would be happy to learn from a drama group session, probably depicting a particular scene in a literature lesson, or he would like to observe the costumes his colleagues were wearing representing the various periods in European history or the different fashion trends observed over the decades of the 20th and early 21st century by children, pre-teens, and teenagers.

    He would learn more by seeing something visually and engaging in an activity that kept him active and moving, rather than just sitting at the easel and painting for hours. He is more of a drama person, a person who would love theatre, costume parties at school, history, geography, or Individuals in Societies fashion shows, actually doing or solving puzzles on the ICT board in class, doing giant crosswords on the same where he had to move around a lot, use markers to mark out places on a huge map put up in the class, etc. This makes him ideal to be called a Visual-Spatial Learner. He likes eye-catching things, but they need to be moving, and he should be on the move as well. That is the only contention.

    Book Review

    The book titled ‘Squiggly Goes to School’ by Indian author and poet Deepa Agarwal, an M.A. in English literature from the University of Allahabad and who taught English in a Delhi University college for a while until she took up freelance journalism and eventually made a name in the genre of children’s literature, is a marvelous and adventurous PYP or Primary Years story book.

    As I mentioned earlier in this book analysis, I was taken with this book back in 1996, when I was in the 2nd grade, and finished it in a single evening. This is because I adored the illustrations of Squiggly, his teacher’s classroom, the 1990s-styled bedroom of Squiggly, and a lot else. I also remember finding the story themed upon school life to be totally up my alley, and the lack of a moral at the end of the tale was at first a shocker to me, but then it became a revelation to indicate to me that not every story needs to have a moral or a sense of moralizing attached to it. I believe Deepa Agarwal wrote this PYP or Primary School storybook to highlight the dictum ‘art for art’s sake,’ which sometimes seems quite lacking in the world in which we find ourselves today.

    This matter is taken up in detail in TOK or Theory of Knowledge Classes at the IBDP level under the topic of ‘Art’, and an initial storybook or PYP novel like ‘Squiggly Goes to School’ can set the ball rolling for this kind of train of thought early in the life of a PYP IB or IGCSE student. Such a student can learn and gain a lot from this book by Deepa Agarwal.

    The book can also enhance a PYP learner’s reading, listening, writing, and speaking skills and can be easily used as a classroom library resource, a bookshelf read, or a leisure reading book. Additionally, it should be kept in the PYP school library to develop students’ story writing skills, particularly in narrative and descriptive writing, which are further developed in the MYP of an IB and IGCSE school. However, this book can aid in laying the groundwork for such crucial writing, which is often tested in the Primary Checkpoint Exam (English) taken in the 5th grade, as well as the Secondary Checkpoint Exam (English), usually in the 7th grade.

    Persuasive writing becomes a focus from 9th grade onwards, culminating in the IGCSE exams in the 10th grade and then finally at the IBDP level. However, in the initial years, story writing in narrative and descriptive forms is essential, and a colorful and vibrant book like ‘Squiggly Goes to School’ can be an excellent teaching tool for an English PYP teacher or a Reading or Library Teacher in the PYP section.

    The book is adventurous, colorful, fascinating, shocking, and evocative, making it a highly engrossing read. I am stating these facts from the perspective of my 7-year-old self. As a middle-aged adult thinking in hindsight, I would also now say that the book can be a great developer of verbal-linguistic skills and intelligence, and the student will learn a lot of new words from this book, be able to improve their oratorial skills, learn how to develop their narrative writing and oral skills, etc. Even a learner with a high level of Spatial/Visual Intelligence will find the illustrations in the book to be vivid, fascinating, beautifully done, and melt-in-the-mouth gorgeous.

    When I read this book back in 1996, I never could have realized that it was penned and published in India; it seemed professionally done and beautiful to the eye, making it a pleasure to observe and relish. The 1990s bedroom of Squiggly, his schoolroom, and his adventure with Chik-Chik all seemed remarkably done, giving it a distinctly Western feel. It just proves that even children as old as 7 years of age are conditioned with a lot of stereotypes as they are growing up, which are then dissolved with a good IB or IGCSE education, especially through the subjects of UOI (Unit of Inquiry) at the PYP level, Individuals and Societies at the MYP level and then TOK or Theory of Knowledge at the IBDP level.

    The illustrations can also encourage some Spatial/Visual Learners to develop their artistic capabilities and style by using a particular IB English teaching strategy called the Split Screen Strategy. This is a strategy where a student, especially in the MYP at the 6th-grade level, can narrate a simple story in a slide or clip format, similar to a picture book, with one side of the book depicting the scene being narrated or described in a pictorial form. In contrast, the other side contains the narration or content. ‘Squiggly Goes to School’ by Deepa Agarwal, winner of the N.C.E.R.T. National Award for Children’s Literature and participant in several literary festivals, including the prestigious Jaipur Literature Festival, Sahitya Akademi Festival of Letters and the Times LitFest can truly aid the MYP and of course, the PYP student to excel in this English story writing strategy.

    The narration was well-edited and crafted. The plot was out of the ordinary, especially without a moral typical of the time during the 20th century, and the character of naughty Squiggly was a delight to read and ponder over.

    Conclusion

    In this section, I want to conclude this book analysis with a brief word about the Multiple Intelligences that Squiggly the Worm did not possess. For one, he was not musically inclined at all as there was no musical instrument in his bedroom, nor a single poster of a music icon or popular musician of the 1990s on the walls of his bedroom. There is no indication that he listened to a lot of music on his 1990s radio. Still, as analyzed in the book, there is every indication that he was a great listener of sports commentaries rather than anything else. So, he did not have any musical intelligence or skills per se.

    He also was undoubtedly not an existentialist and did not reflect on any of his actions at all. He appears to be a carefree and careless individual who does not analyze or reflect on the consequences of his actions, especially his misdeeds. This is evident from the way he carelessly tore pages from his teacher’s textbook to make several paper planes while also not reflecting upon the fact that he could have been killed that day because of emerging from the underground school, and that he was not precisely the ideal philosopher and moralist. He, therefore, could never have any semblance of Existential Intelligence at all. Let us also not forget that he did not even think he was doing anything wrong or illegal by coming to school so late every day.

    This would automatically indicate that, to a certain extent, he never possessed Intrapersonal Intelligence either. From the later books, where his animal friends appear, we are aware that he was a misfit. Still, he liked the company and interacting with his friends, albeit in a more self-centered and selfish manner, which would not enable us to define him as having Interpersonal Intelligence. This is because the latter individuals are highly people-oriented and work cooperatively in groups, most of the time for the betterment of others. This is not so in this worm’s case, who was the personification of the ‘I, me, myself’ dictum.

    Squiggly, therefore, according to the theory of Multiple Intelligences by Dr. Howard Gardner, was a Kinesthetic, Verbal-Linguistic, and Spatial-Visual Leaner by far and large. From the nihilism evident in the last part of the text by Deepa Agarwal, we also realize that Squiggly is unlikely to change anytime soon.

    ‘Squiggly Goes to School’ is perfect for PYP readers eager to improve their reading and writing skills and can be excellent for gifting as well. It was a Frank Educational Aids Private Limited edition book, where Deepa Agarwal created several lovely juvenile fiction books featuring animal characters that played central roles. Other books in this series are:

    1. Cheeko and the School Bag

    2. Lippo Goes to a Party

    3. Flippi the Flying Pup

    4. Squiggly Goes for a Picnic

    All of Deepa Agarwal’s 1990s illustrated animal story books are now available on Amazon India in Kindle format. Get your copy of this book today for your PYP learner!

    Special Note

    If you are interested in more book reviews, indie author interviews, book analyses, short story analyses, poems, essays, essay analyses, and other bookish content, check out my blog, insaneowl.com, and fizapathansteachingportfolioforpgcite.com. If you are interested in purchasing my books, you can visit the products page on my blog or check them on Amazon. There’s a lot of great stuff to buy! Happy reading to you always!

    ©2025 Fiza Pathan

  • ‘Dogbird and Other Mixed-Up Tales’ by Paul Stewart and Tony Ross

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    Title of the Book: Dogbird and Other Mixed-Up Tales

    Author: Paul Stewart

    Illustrator: Tony Ross

    Publisher: Corgi Pups

    Publication Year: 2014

    Pages: 185 pgs.

    ISBN: 978-0-5525-5351-3

    Age Group: PYP (Grades 3rd & 4th)

    Genre: 21st Century Contemporary Animal Stories

    IBDP & IGCSE Subjects Covered: English, Wellbeing, Reading & UOI (Unit of Inquiry)

    Review Written By: Fiza Pathan

    Introduction

    The day shines not only when the sun rises in the sky. The day also shines when a PYP student reads a humorous, feel-good book that makes the child smile brightly like the sun. ‘Dogbird and Other Mixed-Up Tales’ is one such book by Multiple Award-winning British children’s author Paul Stewart, the famous creator of the international bestselling Edge Chronicles Series, which has sold over three million copies and is available in over twenty languages. The book is an omnibus, a collection of three novels by Paul Stewart: ‘ Dogbird’, ‘The Were-Pig’, and ‘The Watch-Frog’. All three books have been illustrated by the internationally famous and well-beloved illustrator Tony Ross, who is renowned for having illustrated some of the books of Roald Dahl and his protégé David Walliams. Tony Ross has also illustrated the famous Horrid Henry Series penned by Francesca Simon, which has sold over twelve million copies and is also an animated CITV series.

    The omnibus is highly humorous with the right touch of magic and a bit of indirect moral education that can go down very well with younger readers, especially in grades three and four. The novels are suspenseful yet hilarious, full of subtle humour, illustrated well, and meticulously crafted to hit the right comical and, at times, sentimental notes with the younger reader. The humour is clean, polished, and full of old-world charm that induces the younger generation to seek to play in the outdoors more than just gaming indoors or watching Netflix all day long.

    Paul Stewart has crafted his stories well, and Tony Ross has yet again done a marvellous job using the distinctive Roald Dahl style in his caricatures and illustrations. Thus, this gives the three novels a comical and fun-filled air, inducing the younger reader in the PYP section to pick the omnibus easily from the shelf. All three books are based on the lives of animals directly or indirectly, and all were published between 1998 and 2003. This was when the maximum number of clean, humourous children’s books were being published and illustrated using the characteristic Roald Dahl style to give the books in question a feel-good and fun setting. An element of fantasy was created only in the latter two books, namely ‘The Were-Pig’ and ‘The Watch Frog’. ‘Dogbird’ is the only realistic book that chronicles the story of a budgie who did not speak at all, twitter, or sing but instead barked like a dog continuously for hours together.

    All the novels are set in Great Britain and are perfect for the Summer or Diwali holidays. The following book analysis of Paul Stewart’s omnibus collectively titled ‘Dogbird and Other Mixed-Up Tales’ is an analysis of the three novels penned by Paul Stewart: ‘Dogbird’ (1998), ‘The Were-Pig’ (2002) and ‘The Watch-Frog’ (2003).

    Synopsis

    Dogbird:

    In the novel ‘Dogbird’ published in 1998, we are introduced to a bird that was one of the most favourite and sought after-winged pets of the 1990s, the budgie. The marvellous aspect of the budgie was that it looked colourful and cute, was soft and had a melodious singing voice, was highly active and entertaining, could speak if taught well, and could cultivate a broad vocabulary. The original budgie was always greenish-yellow in colour. However, other coloured variety budgies started to be bred in controlled laboratory environments, especially for their use in the pet trade in the 1990s. The budgie Dogbird is bluish-white with a bit of yellow that the pet store owner promised would talk if taught well or spoken to.

    Unfortunately, what the cunning pet store owner did not inform little Alice and her parents was that the budgie only seemed to know how to utter one kind of sound: a loud ferocious bark or a series of loud ferocious barks repeatedly for hours together. This would be so authentic that other nearby dogs would start barking loudly and repeatedly along with the budgie. The budgie seemed clueless about what he was doing or saying (or barking) and was at a loss to know why the three black labradors of little Alice’s home were so fond of playing with him and getting him forcefully out of his cage.

    Alice, on the other hand, and her parents were being tortured every day because of Dogbird and his continuous loud barking. They were losing sleep over it and their peace of mind. But they were a loving and decent family and had taken to Dogbird and treated him as part of the family. However, the situation was getting out of hand. Now, the dogs of the vicinity near and far and in the neighbourhood were also barking loudly, repeatedly, and excitedly to Dogbird’s incessant barks. The neighbours and Alice’s family also lost sleep over Dogbird and complained to Alice’s father about getting rid of the budgie or somehow stopping his incessant barking.

    When all seemed impossible to solve, one day Alice decided to release Dogbird into the wild because she could not bear to see him caged up, away from his rightful home and perpetually in danger of being mauled or killed by her ferocious and overexcited three black labradors. Whether her ‘change of heart’ was due partly due to the fact that Dogbird was a menace at their home is not dwelt upon by Paul Stewart, but it seems so as is depicted in the conversations shared between Alice and her best friend, Katie. However, the catalyst was when Dogbird got out of his cage one day when Alice’s parents were out, and the three dogs started chasing and wounding Dogbird in the bargain.

    Alice then set Dogbird free, but soon enough, because of his strange barking, the other birds of the air did not accept him and started pecking him to death. His wing started to bleed, and he tried flying hither and thither to save himself. Alice took matters into her own hands and managed to save poor outcast Dogbird by locking him back in his cage. It was ultimately decided that the best place for Dogbrid would be with Alice’s grandmother as her pet because she had been recently burgled, and burglars in her area were not afraid to rob a house where there were no dogs. It was Alice and Katie who, after Alice’s grandmother’s burglary incident, thought of allowing Dogbird to stay with her. Once this happened, Dogbird and Alice’s grandmother were much happier, and she was very loving towards the budgie, who kept the robbers away from her home and also kept her company. The budgie, therefore, at last found his forever home.

    The Were-Pig:

    In ‘The Were-Pig’, the otherwise tame and calm Albert, a favourite of his maternal grandmother, stole a Mars Bar from his classmate’s tiffin or lunchbox at school one day. He took the Mars Bar outside the school to the grounds in the heat of the shining sun and gobbled down the Mars Bar. When he confessed this to his maternal grandmother, she was shocked and disappointed with Albert and then informed him about something mysterious. On repeatedly asking little Albert whether he ate the bar in the glare of the shining sun and when he confessed that he had done precisely that, his maternal grandmother informed Albert that from henceforth, he would be turned into a Were-Pig.

    According to the maternal grandmother, a Were-Pig was a half-pig and half-human creature similar to a werewolf, a half-wolf and half-human creature. However, where a werewolf only turned into his mysterious form at night when the full moon was seen in the sky, Albert would be turned into a were-pig whenever the sun shone brightly in the sky. Albert found the whole idea scary and odious because his maternal grandmother had never been known to lie to him. And she was proved right the next day because immediately when poor Albert saw the sun shining extremely brightly after a long spell of rain, he turned into a plus-size but miniature were-pig. And the moment he was transformed, he grew extremely or ravenously hungry.

    He went to the school cafeteria and the cafeteria’s kitchen, where he greedily gobbled down all the food he found. He managed to do so on the sly because of his small size, but soon, the other cooks found out about his actions, especially when he accidentally dropped a vessel of heated custard. He tried fleeing from their grasp but was blinded by the slop bucket being attached to his head. He ran away from the scene of the crime with the slop bucket still stuck to his head when he appeared before his homeroom teacher. She immediately recognized him because of his clothes and got the bucket off his head. When his face was revealed, he was again turned into a normal boy and was not caught by the cooks because they were after a giant pig.

    He then vowed to his maternal grandmother that he would never be greedy for food again. He wondered why he was turned back into a normal boy when he noticed an unknown student flicking his Mars Bar from his lunch box. On hearing this news, the maternal grandmother informed him that it was because of the robbery of his own Mars Bar by someone else that he had turned back into a little boy and that the curse of the were-pig was now upon someone else in his school. Albert nevertheless vowed that he would not ever be greedy to rob someone’s food again, and the maternal grandmother seemed unusually pleased with this vow, which made Albert wonder who was behind the magical and crazy happenings of that school day.

    The Watch Frog:

    In the novel ‘The Watch-Frog,’ a little girl named Looby has her bedroom in the back of a tall but cozy house in London. She had been given that room in the house as it was the quietest place in the home, and it remained quiet till one day, a frog appeared in the garden pond outside Looby’s bedroom window. This frog habitually croaked from 4:00 am, disturbing Looby’s sleep midway or too early. Looby started losing sleep literally and metaphorically over this noisy frog, and dark circles started appearing below her eyes along with terrible bags.

    Looby’s grandfather was the one to notice the change in Looby’s sleep-deprived appearance and asked her what the matter was, to which Looby indicated the problem she was having with the frog. When her grandfather heard about the frog, he mysteriously suggested to her that the frog was probably a frog prince, like in the famous fairy story ‘The Frog Prince’ taken from the Grimm Fairy Tales. He hinted that Looby should probably try kissing the frog to get a different reaction. When Looby heard what her grandfather said, she almost gagged and vowed to do anything but kiss the frog living in the little pond outside her bedroom.

    She tried many ways to avoid the irritating and noisy frog non-violently, even taking him to a faraway pool with her mother in tow and releasing him there to live peacefully and comfortably away from her bedroom. However, the frog always managed to find his way back. One day, the neighbour’s ginger-coloured tomcat, Pugsy, partially swallowed the frog. It was then that Looby felt so terrible for the frog that she saved him from the clutches of Pugsy. The Frog was wounded and lying unconscious beside Looby, which broke her heart. Looby petted and kissed him gently to revive him, after which the Frog returned to consciousness and started conversing in English.

    However, he did not turn into a handsome prince as Looby’s grandfather thought would happen if his granddaughter kissed the frog. Instead, this frog retold the story of his recent adventure to a very curious and patient Looby. He informed her that he was an ordinary 12-year-old pre-teen boy. A week ago, he was spending his summer vacation at his seaside adventure camp while his parents were off trekking in the Amazon rainforest, which they did every year. Diving off the coast the previous Sunday, he bumped into a hideous-looking waterwitch who turned him into a frog. She said he would never return to normal unless he did something good for another person without expecting anything. Since then, he found himself in Looby’s backyard or garden pond and had been croaking away, thinking that he probably had to do something good for her to turn back into a 12-year-old boy and return to his family before the summer vacation ended or his family would get worried about him. The summer vacation that year was going to end in 8 days, and before that, he was keen on turning back into a 12-year-old boy.

    On hearing his intriguing story, Looby was keen on helping him out as long as he stopped his incessant croaking and roomed with her in her bedroom away from Pugsy the tomcat, who had evil intentions for the frog. She made a special aquarium for him that very day and placed him in it. She accidentally fell asleep due to many days of sleep deprivation, and after she awakened, she turned to check whether the aquarium or frog tank was still there or whether she had dreamt of the whole episode. The tank was still there with the frog in it, but he had stopped both croaking and talking. Instead, he stared at her quietly and intently whenever she tried to converse with him. Soon, she started questioning her sanity as she returned to a normal state, especially her sleep schedule.

    One night at around 12:40 am, the frog woke the sleeping Looby up by croaking desperately as he used to. Looby was shocked to hear him croaking in this manner but then realized the reason for the same. Gas had been leaked in her home because of a faulty bathroom geyser that her father had worked on without the help of a professional. This led to severe and dangerous gas leakage, which could have blown up the house or could have set the house on fire. The authorities arrived on time to save the family from the crisis successfully, along with reprimanding Looby’s father for trying to fix the geyser on his own as a ‘do-it-yourself’ project because gas was never to be tampered so carelessly with. While all this was happening, Looby realized the frog had saved her family’s life. She headed straight back to her bedroom when she found the frog missing from his tank. Instead, she saw giant webbed footprints, part of a young pre-teen’s scuba diving outfit, walking out of her bedroom, down her stairs, then out of her house, and getting lost in the garden and further from her home. She realized, therefore, that because of his good deed, the frog had been successfully turned into a pre-teen boy again and had started his journey back to his parents home before that year’s summer vacation could end or before they returned from trekking in the Amazon.

    Analysis

    Dogbird:

    As stated earlier, all the stories were cleanly humorous and also indicated an indirect moral at the end of the story. None of the novels could better define this statement than the novel ‘Dogbird’. Though Dogbird was accepted in the home of Alice and her parents, he found his forever home in her grandmother’s house because her grandmother would accept Dogbird for who he was and because he was helpful to her as an indirect protector.

    However, there is another implicit aspect that we, as IB or IGCSE teachers, can also identify with while reading about the grandmother’s relationship with the budgie. Notice that when the budgie lived with Alice and her family, he would only bark or growl incessantly and viciously like a dog. However, the moment he started living with Alice’s grandmother, he barked only when he needed to do so to protect her. Instead, he began speaking to the grandmother, occasionally using words and phrases he picked up from her. This indicates that her acceptance of his uniqueness and her putting him at ease brought out the budgie tendencies hidden within him all the time, apart from his unique but annoying characteristic. If Alice and her family had probably been more affectionate and accepting of the budgie while he was with them, he would have stopped barking incessantly. Notice that even when Alice’s family named the budgie, they called him tauntingly by the rather rude name of Dogbird. In contrast, the grandmother gave him the decent and endearing name of Bluey, giving him the respect that a new family member was due.

    Another factor worth pondering is the sudden rush to get the budgie free into the wild after the three labradors attacked Dogbird. It is evident that Alice’s family did not want the bird, and Alice knew it was also becoming a nuisance in the neighborhood. She wanted a budgie in the house to speak and sing to her human words, not to talk only barking sounds that dogs could understand. Therefore, all these factors were put into play and set off by the catalyst of the budgie being attacked by the three black labradors that induced Alice and even Katie to set Dogbrid free into the wild. That is a highly grey characteristic we see in Alice and Katie per se. Still, the fact that she saved the budgie from imminent doom immediately when his kind did not accept him negated that the bird’s release was maliciously done to get rid of him.

    This particular story contained within this omnibus titled ‘Dogbird and Other Mixed-Up Tales’ by Paul Stewart is the only one that is realistic and does not contain a fantasy element. This made the novel seem more believable than the other two and more relatable because the issues faced by all the characters and their reactions to the same were probably how most human beings would react in such an extraordinary circumstance. The grandmother’s response to Dogbird was, however, very touching, making the young PYP reader realize that the grandmother was one of those individuals who lived an ordinary life in an extraordinary manner with compassion and lots of love.

    Coming to the bird itself, the budgie, as I have mentioned before, is the classic 1990s pet bird (also known as a parakeet, especially in the USA) that one would, as the decade progressed, see in every other kid’s birdcage at home or in their private garden. They were bred in various colours to be housed as pets as they were amiable, had a vast vocabulary, were not as vicious or moody as parrots, were great singers, could be easily trained if adopted when young, and because of hobby breeders keeping them in custody for decades together, they had acquired the tendency to live much longer than other pet birds.

    Dogbird was a blue-white and yellow male budgie or parakeet, which is not the ordinary colour of this bird species found originally in the wild. Only green-yellow budgies are found in the wild; the colour mutation breeding was done to sell these colourful and cute-looking birds as pets. That was yet another reason why when Dogbird was let out into the wild, the other birds were unwilling to accept him because he did not look like a regular budgie or parakeet of the wild. He looked like an alien, and usually, birds are not so tolerant of aliens. They prefer to eliminate such a creature rather than risk being hurt by them. That probably accounts for the wild birds’ unruly behavior towards Dogbird in the novel.

    The Were-Pig:

    There were more direct explicit images in this novel titled ‘The Were-Pig’ than implicit ones. This is because the novel was directly related to the theme of fantasy rather than based on a real animal’s story. In ‘The Were-Pig’, we see a little wild side to the author Paul Stewart, where he hints directly that Albert’s maternal grandmother was probably a witch who delved into magic. That is perhaps why she was considered a strange one in her family and an added reason why Albert’s mother was a single parent fending for herself and her only son. We see the inclusion of single-parent children in his novel ‘The Were-Pig’ and the difficulties they go through when they are misunderstood. Yet despite so many positive and intriguing aspects to this particular novel, which incorporates very well the inclusiveness reserved for a perfect IB and IGCSE education, the novel is lacking in a proper plot, suspense and Albert seems like a weak character at the end of the novel compared to his astounding maternal grandmother and brave single parent mother whom we as readers wished we saw more of in this novel. It would have probably added some direction to an otherwise weak plot.

    We are told the bare minimum about these two independent and unconventional women, just that Albert’s mother had divorced her husband recently, was a working single mother, and left home at 7:00 am and returned home around 12 hours later. She, therefore, needed the assistance of her mother, Nan Tucker, who was an unconventional grandmother who did not look the part at all, especially with her slim and trim figure, her bright brown hair, her green eyes, plaited long and colourful skirts, beads in her hair and her penchant for playing the guitar, telling amazing stories, allowing Albert the free will to pick strange things up from the road, etc. We, as readers, hoped to see more of these two daring women in the novel, but the novel drifted toward Albert’s school life, which did not attract as much attention because of Albert’s underdevelopment as a character.

    Albert’s mother was not even given a name, which is surprising when such a meaningful, inclusive element had been introduced by the author Paul Stewart in the form of a single parent; why introduce such an eye-catching and inclusive element to the story and then neglect to name the intriguing character? As mentioned before in the analysis, the book was published in the year 2002, when such themes were not common in the juvenile fiction of the day, but if anyone took the trouble to normalize this situation, they would have at least the decency of giving a name to the mother or a proper description of her profession! It is the least the author can do to give dignity to his character. Nevertheless, this was a start in the genre that would develop significantly over a remarkable decade of inclusivity in children’s literature, which would blossom into the courageous, bold, and stunning new genre of juvenile literature post-2014. In 2025, when this review is being typed, the symbol of the single-parent mother is highly glorified rather than hidden in the background of a story, novel, or even a bestselling series.

    As mentioned earlier, the plot is weak, and the theme of the were-pig intrigues the reader, but the insatiable appetite of Albert when he turns into a were-pig is not pleasing or intriguing to the eye to witness. One tends to gawk at the food-devouring were-pig waiting for some real action to take place, which never does happen. Nevertheless, it was a feel-good read, though not as humourous as ‘Dogbird’ and ‘The Watch-Frog’. A sight for sore eyes is to see the female homeroom teacher of Albert’s being inclusively represented as a Black-British woman and thankfully not painted according to the caricature of a damsel in distress, which was the epitome of what most of the juvenile books of the 1980s and 1990s were all about. This kind of inclusivity is in keeping with the English curriculum of an IB or IGCSE student and can be analyzed and critiqued by the PYP 3rd or 4th-grade student in their UOI or Unit of Inquiry class.

    The homeroom teacher is depicted here as a villain who tends to pick on Albert whenever he is caught off guard. Her name was Mrs. Wilkinson, and this is a daring and unique feature of this novel titled ‘The Were-Pig’. The notion of being free enough to depict Black-British or Black-American characters as villains or negative characters boldly only managed to strike a permanent ground in 2015 without unduly harming the sentiments related to that particular community in the field of literature. It was fascinating to see Mrs. Wilkinson pulling the slop bucket off Albert’s little head and trying to visualize that portion. It can bring a bit of a chuckle in any young reader, considering the otherwise nondescript Albert trying to get into trouble by getting himself uselessly stuck in a bucket of slop and potato peels!

    There is an indication that the story’s ending was partly due to some magic hidden up the sleeve of Nan Tucker, as is evident from the mysterious disappearance of the Mars Bar from Albert’s tiffin box or lunch box. This similar element is also seen in the third novel titled ‘The Watch-Frog’, where it seems like Looby’s grandfather had something up his sleeve when he dropped a hint to Looby to try and steal a kiss from the annoying frog in her backyard. Where the former story was concerned, however, the Grandmother gave a direct indication that she could have been responsible for the strange happenings in Albert’s day at school, while the latter, Looby’s grandfather, does not make an appearance after the 12-year-old boy cum frog leaves her residence to return to his parents.

    The Watch-Frog:

    In ‘The Watch-Frog’, a novel published by Paul Stewart in 2003, a year soon after ‘The Were-Pig’, one sees that Paul Stewart tries to redeem his glaring plot holes or lack thereof in the story of friendship between two very different people: a frog who is out to return to his human absentee parents and Looby, or A.K.A. Louise Mitchell, who wants to regain her beauty sleep by wishing a frog in her pond to grow silent for a change!

    These two very different people are not out to romance each other but to help each other out so as not to make the 12-year-old boy’s absentee parents worried about his absence from the seaside adventure camp and their home. The themes or virtues implied are compassion, mercy, helpfulness, and gratefulness or being thankful. All these virtues are part of the PYP IB or International Board student’s overall incorporated 12 Attitudes to foster some fundamental IB values, beliefs, and feelings in the concerned student. They would fall into the categories of:

    1. Appreciation

    2. Commitment

    3. Empathy

    4. Integrity and

    5. Respect

    Though the two children show exemplary compassion, commitment, and gratitude for their service to each other, we see some negative aspects in their fellow adults. The 12-year-old boy’s parents are intellectual adventurists who prefer leaving to go off trekking to the Amazon rain forest for a whole month without even seeing their son, who would be sent off to a seaside adventure camp till they would arrive back. It is evident from the sub-plot of the story that the boy’s absence from the camp would only be reported to the absentee parents another 8 days after the boy’s mysterious disappearance. Yet, in his distress, the ever-faithful son is not concerned about his predicament as he recounts his ordeal to Looby. Instead, he wishes to return to his normal form to return to his parent’s home before the summer vacation ends, as they would be worried upon returning to England and hearing that their son has been missing for the past 16 or more days! The boy’s respect and admiration for his parents and their job is evident from his reason for returning to them.

    However, the absentee parents seem too irresponsible in this instance. The story is set in 2002 when mobile phones and other forms of telecommunication were readily available and affordable enough to Westerners. The 12-year-old boy’s parents were probably research scientists, and it would be necessary for them to carry several forms of telecommunication with them while on their trekking. Yet, they felt it impossible to contact their only son during this long absence. This sounds too neglectful on their part rather than making us as readers sympathize with them, saying that they were busy individuals with no time other than their personal affairs.

    Also, Looby’s mother and father were quite careless individuals, with Looby’s mother being unsure about how to conduct herself with her daughter concerning the sleep issue or the presence of the perpetually croaking frog. Even Looby’s father showed his absolute carelessness and disregard for his family’s safety when he tried to fix the geyser on his own, causing a terrible gas leak that could have taken their lives if the frog had not alerted Looby on time. Therefore, this novel shows several cases of careless parents who seem disinterested in their family’s or children’s wellbeing. Even Looby’s dark circles and bags don’t startle her parents enough to take it upon themselves to get rid of the frog for the sake of their little girl. This was startling yet somewhat relatable compared to the exaggerated parenting style of the Wormwoods starring in Roald Dahl’s international bestselling and perennial favourite novel ‘Matilda’. To read up on my book review of the novel ‘Matilda’ check it out on my bookish and literary blog insaneowl.com.

    The Wormwoods were absolute disasters as parents for little Matilda. In contrast, many things were redeemable about Looby’s parents, especially their concern for her welfare and sleep deprivation. This can be seen in the fact that where the former was concerned, they made her have the tallest and quietest bedroom in the house to rest in, while where the latter was concerned, they constantly inquired after her health and sleep, or lack thereof.

    Conclusion

    Thus, Paul Stewart’s three books in this omnibus titled ‘Dogbird and Other Mixed-Up Tales’ were entertaining, an excellent tool for value education or what we call in an IGCSE or IB school as the subject Wellbeing, a light read, and an extremely well-illustrated one indeed. Tony Ross, the illustrator, has worked well with Paul Stewart to create memorable illustrations and caricatures for this omnibus that can easily make the younger PYP reader laugh out loud and yet learn some excellent IB Fundamentally Positive Attitudes along the way as prescribed by the IBO. I’ve noticed that when Tony Ross gets along well with his author colleague, the project they mutually work on turns out very well. Paul Stewart seems like an expert in moralistic subtle humour for juvenile readers. It would seem like, unlike Roald Dahl, he tends to move towards the absurd and even the sentimental, something similar to the plots of David Walliams, the protégé of Roald Dahl or, as most initial fans of Walliams call him, the true heir to Roald Dahl fame. I hope to read and review more books illustrated by Tony Ross in the near future.

    I look forward to reading, reviewing, and analyzing more PYP or Primary Years Programme-related books in the fiction and non-fiction categories in light of the International Baccalaureate.

    Special Note

    If you are interested in more book reviews, indie author interviews, book analyses, short story analyses, poems, essays, essay analyses, and other bookish content, check out my blog, insaneowl.com. If you are interested in purchasing my books, you can check the products page on Amazon. There is a lot of good stuff to buy! Happy reading to you always!

    ©2025 Fiza Pathan

  • ‘The Crazy World of Ms Wiz’ by Terence Blacker

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    Title of the Book: The Crazy World of Ms Wiz

    Author: Terence Blacker

    Publisher: Macmillan Children’s Books

    Publication Year: Omnibus Edition 2004

    Pages: 187 pgs.

    ISBN: 9780330431361/0-330-43136-6

    Age Group: PYP & MYP (Grades 3rd, 4th, 5th & 6th)

    Genre: Children’s Fantasy

    IBDP & IGCSE Subjects Covered: English Language & English Literature

    Review Written By: Fiza Pathan

    Introduction

    ‘Where there is a woman there is magic.’

    -Ntozake Shange (American playwright, poet & novelist)

    ‘I’ve always believed in the above quote. So I was keen on reading this omnibus titled ‘The Crazy World of Ms Wiz’, which is a collection of three of the Ms Wiz novels penned by Terence Blacker with some awesome illustrations done by Tony Ross of the Roald Dahl and David Walliams, fame. Any book where a woman prefers to be referred to by the ambiguous Ms rather than the clearer Mrs and Miss is always up my alley, even as an IB and IGCSE teacher in training. When I realized after reading a few pages of this omnibus that Ms Wiz did not like to be referred to by the prefix Mrs or Miss because they seemed too ‘drab’ that caught my attention, and then I started diving deep into the magical world of Ms Wiz the witch or rather, the paranormal operator as she likes to call herself and her wonderful batch of third-grade students who loved her style of teaching and relating to them as friends more than students.

    I think the last line explains why I probably relished the Ms Wiz omnibus, especially the first book in the series titled ‘Ms Wiz Spells Trouble’ which is the book in which Ms Wiz is introduced to the class of third-form students at St. Barnabas School situated in England. I relished it because the way Ms Wiz taught or rather educated her students was so in keeping with the IB method of teaching, which is in a way made up of ‘magic’ that, in a sense, this kind of education puts the onus on the student concerning their development and role in the education process or their learning. It teaches them individual self-efficacy, which is a kind of ‘magic’ in itself because then the teacher is more of a facilitator to aid the child to excel at their own pace in the subjects of their choices for an all-round development, which is what a proper IB or International Board Education is all about.

    Ms Wiz is the epitome of the ideal IB teacher who teaches magic more than subjects and creates ethically minded and yet successful students for life who will make a positive difference to the world rather than just parrots who can repeat subject content verbatim without analyzing the connecting dots or lines in between their subjects of study. Whether it was the smart Alec Jack, the meek Podge, the lazy Caroline, or the girl with gumption, Katrina, Ms Wiz managed to teach all the IDEA students effectively, catering to their individual needs and making them fit enough to tackle their own educational needs for the rest of their lives for the betterment of themselves and others. I saw the IDEA students imprinted in every student in this series who were taught and nurtured by the amazing Ms Wiz. Indeed, it is, therefore, quite true that where there is a woman sans her patriarchal conditioning, there will always be magic.

    I saw a lot of things that Ms Wiz cast aside that she felt were not in keeping with the overall positive development of her wards at St. Barnabas School, including patriarchy and what patriarchy determined that a female teacher should look like, teach like, speak like and even have a prefix to her name. This was revolutionary on the part of Terence Blacker to inculcate in the minds of younger readers as far back as 1988 when the first book in this series was published in Great Britain.

    Book Synopsis

    As mentioned in the introduction, this omnibus by Terence Blacker, illustrated by the well-renowned and loved Tony Ross, contains three books from the Ms Wiz series. They are:

    1. Ms Wiz Spells Trouble (1988)

    2. In Stitches With Ms Wiz (1989)

    3. You’re Nicked Ms Wiz (1989)

    The first book was published in 1988 after which the following year in 1989, the other two books in the Ms Wiz series were published back-to-back. The following are the condensed storylines of each Ms Wiz novel:

    1. Ms Wiz Spells Trouble

    This is the novel where Ms Wiz is first introduced to the third-form students of St. Barnabas School as their new homeroom teacher. The third-form students were always considered a difficult batch of students that no homeroom teacher at St. Barnabas could handle. However, Ms Wiz, with her unconventional ways, dressing sense, name, and, of course, her magic, managed to set the third-form students in order on the first day itself, and from then on, the students took to her like several moths to a flame. They enjoyed coming to school and learning new subjects and topics, especially researching them, similar to the IB and IGCSE styles of education. Ms Wiz would also bring live pets, specimens, and animals to the class to demonstrate the topic of study or under study more elaborately and to the utter delight of the students. They especially loved it whenever Ms Wiz brought along to school her pet rat named Herbert. However, the students were warned by Ms Wiz never to divulge to the outside world about their magical world and that she was a witch or, rather, a paranormal operator. The students kept their promise. But the school authorities started smelling a rat, which would be more than just the occasional appearance of Herbert the rat, and so they started spying on Ms Wiz’s class. In turn, these teachers or other authority figures got turned into ducks, geese, pigs, et al., whenever they would try to meddle in the affairs of Ms Wiz and her third-form students. Nothing would stop the students of the third form from excelling in all their studies and extra-curricular activities. On the final prize distribution day ceremony, they were all in for a surprise when they realized that their favorite teacher of all time, Ms Wiz, would leave their school forever. They try to stop her but end up knowing that even without Ms Wiz’s magic, they can still be excellent math wizards, sportsmen or women, all-rounders, etc. Therefore, Ms Wiz, as a teacher or paranormal operator, only appeared when children needed extra magic in their lives to make their world a better place. Ms Wiz, after bidding adieu to them, took off into the sky on her vacuum cleaner, reminding them that they would once in a while see her again whenever they or their friends needed some magic in their lives.

    2. In Stitches With Ms Wiz

    In this novel in the Ms Wiz series, the third-form student Jack is suddenly caught with terrible pain in his lower abdomen. Since his parents were absentee nonchalant parents, they did not pay attention to Jack’s trouble, nor did his quite heartless new third-form homeroom teacher, a self-centered male named Mr. Bailey. Mr. Bailey even thought poor Jack was faking the pain in his abdomen due to an upcoming Math test. Finally, however, Jack was taken in an ambulance to the hospital when, on arrival, it was determined that he had a swollen appendix. It was so swollen that if he had come any time later, he would have been in serious trouble. Jack, however, made it and had his appendix removed in the absence of his parents and little sister. However, to his luck with his obnoxious surgeon consultant was another doctor who looked vaguely familiar to him. To his surprise and joy, he later realized that that doctor was his favorite third-form teacher, Ms Wiz. He was glad upon seeing her and wondered what a third-form teacher was doing in a general hospital helping out a surgeon! To that, Ms Wiz revealed that she was aware that this appendix surgery would be tough on Jack, and so she decided to turn into a fake surgeon to assist at his bedside during the operation. As she had mentioned in the earlier book, whenever her students needed a bit of magic to lighten up their lives, Ms Wiz would be there. She inadvertently converted the annoying Franklyn, Jack’s roommate, who managed to witness all the amazing magic that took place during Jack’s stay at the hospital to her form of teaching and magic. Meanwhile, Mr. Bailey, the self-centered new third-form teacher, realized that he had done a great injustice to Jack by mistreating him at school when poor Jack was truly having terrible abdominal pain, which later on turned out to be appendicitis. Mr. Bailey tries to set things right by visiting Jack in the hospital when his parents and little sister are around. Unfortunately, he ends up making an even greater fool of himself by eating up Jack’s appendix, thinking it to be the hospital’s rubbery food! This was done through the magic of Ms Wiz to teach the heartless third-form teacher a lesson. Along with cheering up Jack and Franklyn, attending to the needs of other lonely patients in the hospital, and flooding the hospital with a lot of white rodents due to not being able to locate the whereabouts of Herbert, the white pet rat of Ms Wiz, Ms Wiz managed to cause quite a ruckus in the hospital after which she made off on her vacuum cleaner. Jack made it out of the hospital, good to go, but Podge, his classmate who truly wanted to miss a Math test at school, taking a cue from Jack, also pretended to be having abdominal pain and tried to get into the hospital to be with Ms Wiz. When he, at the last moment, realized that Ms. Wiz was just about to leave the hospital and he would be alone to tackle the mean consultant surgeon in the hospital, he managed to save himself from being operated upon by getting off the bed and running for his dear life!

    3. You’re Nicked Ms Wiz

    In this novel, a little girl known well to Ms Wiz lost her pet cat over the school week. Her name was Lizzie, and she was in the third form at St. Barnabus School with the other third form students taught earlier by Ms Wiz. Mr. Bailey, the new third-form teacher, could not understand the seriousness of Lizzie’s pain being separated from her cat, Waif or Waify. He pooh-poohed her sorrow, which annoyed most of the students of the third form who were formerly students of Ms Wiz. However, Lizzie was not about to give up on her search for Waify, so she started putting up missing posters of him all over town and even personally tried looking for him herself. In the bargain, she met up with a female tramp who happened to be her former teacher, Ms Wiz, in disguise. Again, Ms Wiz had returned to help Lizzie find her pet cat with a little bit of her magic. The story goes on to indicate how Ms Wiz tried to save Waify from a set of mismatched cat kidnappers while the local police were under the mistaken impression that Lizzie had been kidnapped by a female tramp named Ms Wiz who was known to Jack and Caroline, her former students. Ms Wiz, to save Waify, turned Lizzie into a cat to creep into the lair of the kidnappers, upon which she realized that the cats’ fur was going to be used to make gloves for a soulless elite individual called Mrs. D’Arcy and then later would be killed. She tried notifying Ms Wiz about the same but was stuck in the lair because the foolish local police had nabbed Ms Wiz. Ms Wiz, after turning the local police force into white rabbits, then managed, with the help of Jack and Caroline, to head straight to the kidnappers’ lair to stop the malicious Mrs. D’Arcy from having her way with the innocent cats. With the aid of her magic, Ms Wiz manages to save Waify and the other cats, turn Lizzie back into a human being, make a human being out of a cat kidnapper, and renders Mrs. D’Arcy naked, which almost stunned the local police inspector into a state of hysterical laughter and shock at the same time. Thereby, Ms Wiz, as a tramp, proved helpful to her little friends when they needed her and her magic the most.

    Book Analysis

    “What is a teacher? I’ll tell you: it isn’t someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows.”

    ― Paulo Coelho (from his book ‘The Witch of Portobello’)

    As mentioned in the introduction, Ms Wiz’s style of educating or imparting education to her students in the third form reminded me a lot about how a Cambridge or International Board Teacher or IB Teacher conducts herself. This is enshrined in the quote by internationally well-renowned author Paulo Coelho words in the quote I’ve mentioned above because a teacher like Ms Wiz teaches the student not only individual self-efficacy but also manages to create an ethically minded global citizen who can help in the sustainable development of the world and the cosmos through innovation, positivity and active participation in all forms of constructive technological advancement world over. These students then don’t remain merely students but turn into teachers in their own right who teach their skills to others, spreading wide the circle to create inclusion for all and sundry.

    The students of Form Three in St. Barnabus School were very ethically sound and could excel at whatever they needed to in life; they just needed that confidence and validation from an innovative teacher to gear them toward achieving their goals and fulfilling their ultimate potential already inherent in them. I think Ms Wiz, especially in the first book in this omnibus, namely, ‘Ms Wiz Spells Trouble’ manages to inculcate:

    1. The 12 IB or International Board Attitudes she wished her students to imbibe, namely:

    • Appreciation
    • Commitment
    • Confidence
    • Cooperation
    • Creativity
    • Curiosity
    • Empathy
    • Enthusiasm
    • Independence
    • Integrity
    • Respect
    • Tolerance

    2. The Five IB Skills a Student Needs to Change the World for the better, namely:

    • Thinking Skills
    • Social Skills
    • Communication Skills
    • Self-Management Skills
    • Research Skills

    3. She even incorporated the Cambridge Learners Attributes in her students, namely making her students:

    (i) Confident

    (ii) Responsible

    (iii) Reflective

    (iv) Innovative

    (v) Engaged

    4. She even strove to create various IB Learner Profiles within her third-form students to make them into internationally minded citizens who recognized their common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, which would help create a better and peaceful world. These IB Learner Profiles are:

    1. Inquirers

    2. Knowledgeable

    3. Thinkers

    4. Communicators

    5. Principled

    6. Open-minded

    7. Caring

    8. Risk-Takers

    9. Balanced

    10. Reflective

    One can see and witness all this when one reads the three books in this omnibus. One could then easily think that the author and creator of the Ms Wiz series, Terence Blacker, probably knew something about the Cambridge and IB forms of education. Here are some examples from the various three books in this omnibus titled ‘The Crazy World of Ms. Wiz’ to illustrate the points put forward:

    Example 1:

    In the book ‘Ms Wiz Spells Trouble, ’ Podge was never known to be able to excel at any sporting event due to him being plus size. But Ms Wiz encouraged him to be a risk taker, which is part of the IB Learner Profile and created a lot of confidence, enthusiasm, and independence in him, which are essential IB Attitudes to undertake the many sporting events conducted by St. Barnabus School where he emerged as the undisputed winner of all the games, first with a little help via Ms Wiz’s magic and then all on his own. By the time Ms Wiz left at the end of the book on her vacuum cleaner, Podge had even stunned his indifferent and bossy parents by his capabilities as a sportsman.

    Example 2:

    In the novel ‘You’re Nicked Ms. Wiz’, because of the proper training done by Ms Wiz in the third form with her students, Lizzie was able to be empathetic, committed, and independent enough to turn into a risk taker to seek out her lost cat Waify despite the nonchalance of Mr. Bailey. Her love and commitment to the safety of her cat made her take on the responsibility of seeking Waify out herself. She was pushed to put up numerous posters of the cat all over town on her own, thereby incorporating not only a lot of IB Learner Attributes but also some of the major Cambridge Leaner Attributes, like being confident, responsible, and engaged.

    Example 3:

    In the novel ‘In Stitches With Ms. Wiz,’ the third-form student Caroline, studying with Jack, because of her empathetic nature, immediately recognizes that Jack is not fibbing when he states to Mr. Bailey that he is indeed getting a lot of discomfort and pain in his abdomen. She even coaxed Mr. Bailey to call the hospital, which showed her independent spirit, her risk-taking capabilities, and her confidence in dealing with a rather difficult homeroom teacher, not to mention that she was committed and responsible for the welfare of her friend Jack. If one had studied the previous novel in this omnibus, ‘Ms Wiz Spells Trouble’ then one would have realized that before Ms Wiz came into Caroline’s life, Caroline was a rather laid back and lazy student tending to always daydream in class and not having any reason to excel in her studies or other extra-curricular activities. After Ms Wiz inculcated in her a sense of direction and motivation, the class dreamer turned over the term into the class spokesperson and a very committed and talented student, especially falling in the category of an Independent Learner according to the IB and Cambridge theory of the four different IDEA Learners in a classroom. One would notice the witty Caroline later on giving Mr. Bailey a hard time for having driven poor Jack almost to the brink and creating, in turn, a comically guilty conscience in Mr. Bailey.

    Example 4:

    In the novel ‘Ms Wiz Spells Trouble’, we notice that at the beginning of the third form, Jack is an Emerging Learner in Mathematics. All his previous teachers treated him like a dunce, so he never developed his abilities in Mathematics any further. But when Ms Wiz came into his life and taught him Math through a lot of magic and some innovative teaching techniques, which involved a lot of kinesthetic and visual learning among the various types of learning techniques according to Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory, then Jack turned into a Developing Learner in Mathematics and then finally into such an amazing Independent Learner that at the Prize distribution ceremony it was he who won the award for outstanding performance in Mathematics in the whole school. Thus, Ms. Wiz developed in Jack a sense of confidence in himself and his mathematical capabilities, making him a risk-taker ready to reflect on his various approaches toward a sum. Then, he became highly knowledgeable and enthusiastic in this subject, which earlier used to be his bete noir.

    Further Points for Analysis

    Here are a few extra points one can analyze from a literary point of view from the omnibus titled ‘The Crazy World Of Ms Wiz’ by author Terence Blacker and illustrator Tony Ross.

    • Feminism

    One notices that Ms Wiz is a hard-core feminist who does not abide by the laws set down by patriarchal society, including in the way she wishes people and students to address her. She did not wish to be defined as a person by her relationship with a man, that is, through the prefixes Mrs. or Miss. She wished to be an independent woman, feeling that whether she was married or not was none of anyone’s business and did not define her as a teacher or a paranormal operator. She even refuses to use the word ‘witch’ to define her profession, which is indeed a negative patriarchally created sexist connotation to define a woman who knew magic. In the same context, a male who knew magic would only be termed a wizard or a warlock, both of which do not hold the negative connotations easily evident in the former term ‘witch’. She instead wishes to call herself something neutral, like a paranormal operator, where her gender would not define her capabilities as an adept in the art of white magic. Ms Wiz, a third form teacher, dresses oddly; she paints her nails with black nail polish, making herself look like a punk, wears, at times, black lipstick, is loud as a person, wears black heavy metal clothing to school and treats her students like one of her own little friends rather than her juniors and so her students were in awe of her and yet were very friendly and fond of her. One especially saw this in the book ‘Ms Wiz Spells Trouble’ on the sports field whenever Ms Wiz, like the students, would also jump up and down on her seat to cheer her students participating in the various races and games that day. Ms Wiz was never known to be living with anyone else and was always on her own with her China-figure cat Hecate and her white rat Herbert to keep her company. She knew how to make any space homely and comfy, as is shown in ‘You’re Nicked Ms Wiz’, where she even manages to make a tramp’s broken-down car into a haven of delights for herself, her pets, and her guest Lizzie. Ms Wiz was not bashful and bold in dealing with dangers and with tyrannical men who tried to put her down or with anyone who tried to harm her students. Her independent spirit, self-assurance, self-actualization qualities, and calm disposition make her an ideal feminist candidate worthy of emulation.

    • One Inconsistency

    In the book ‘You’re Nicked Ms Wiz’ one notices that when Ms Wiz is being dragged away from the kidnapper’s den by the police inspector, she does not use her magic then to turn them into white rabbits but waits for a full night to pass till she can do just this in the presence of Jack and Caroline, who technically were not needed for the magic act to take place. This she does even though Lizzie is in grave trouble as she was stuck in the kidnapper’s den as a cat in danger of being skinned off her fur and then killed with the other cats. I thought it to be a severe inconsistency on the part of Terence Blacker to have created this particular sub-plot twist in the story because it was not exactly needed for Ms Wiz to prove her innocence to the police at the cost of an innocent little child’s life. Ms Wiz could have, then and there, outside the lair, turned the policemen into white rabbits en masse. She could have gone on to save Lizzie rather than allowing herself to be dragged away and locked in prison. There was no question of a long-distance issue in this instance either because at least the police were near her, and she could have easily turned them into rabbits because of the proximity. I noted this inconsistency in the third book in this omnibus.

    • Note on Tony Ross’ Illustrations

    If one were to notice the Tony Ross illustrations in this omnibus titled ‘The Crazy World of Ms Wiz’, one would notice that Tony Ross followed a style similar to his drawings of the Horrid Henry Series by Francesca Simon. One can see the same dark blush red in the cheeks of Ms Wiz as it is in Horrid Henry, the more vibrant dark colours rather than the usual Quentin Blake style faded watercolor splashes as in the Roald Dahl books; one can also see the strong and well formed drawing lines rather than the sketchy and messy lines of the Roald Dahl books. However, as the series progresses, Tony Ross seems in a hurry or at odds with the author, for I see a certain hastiness in the illustrations to get the work done. There is no soul in most of the drawings therein though some were drawn with a deft hand, especially in the book ‘You’re Nicked Ms Wiz’, but there were many scrawls done in several places that were inconsistent with the overall illustrative style theme of this series as was shown in the first book ‘Ms Wiz Spells Trouble’. One would decipher that there was some acrimony between Tony Ross and Terence Blacker, as Tony Ross’ name is only mentioned as an afterthought at the back of this omnibus where the ISBN and ASIN are placed! That is not something done in a book where the illustrations play more of a plot guide than anything else and are the heart and soul of the various stories. I did not feel that was done in good taste either by Terence Blacker or by the publishers in question because, as an indie-publisher myself, I make sure to publish the name of my illustrator at the front of my children’s books, especially my books in the Rare Classics Series where I adapt and abridge rare classics for younger readers. It is not good publishing ethics to divert attention and credit due to the illustrator to the author of a juvenile fiction illustrated book or a PYP/MYP or Lower Secondary book, which took place here in this omnibus. Otherwise, the illustrations were good enough, just that they were a bit sketchy, inconsistent, and drawn in a hurry. Compared to the illustrations done by the same Tony Ross in the David Walliams books like ‘Demon Dentist’, ‘Awful Aunty’, ‘Ratburger’ or even something that I am reading recently, which is another PYP read titled ‘Dogbird and Other Mixed Up Tales’ by Paul Stewart, Tony Ross’ illustrations there are firm, neat, beautifully done and very poignant to the plot and not messy at all or drawn in a hurry.

    Conclusion

    As I mentioned, Ms Wiz reminded me a lot about myself as a teacher – not bashful, highly feminist, innovative, captivating for some reason, unconventional, loyal, highly principled, etc. That is why I took easily to her stories and felt that she is the epitome of what an IGCSE or IB teacher should be to create world citizens for the future. I identified very much with Ms Wiz, especially in how I relate to students as my friends more than my juniors or subordinates. I don’t appreciate that ‘talk them down’ attitude at all, and I prefer a comforting and friendly atmosphere in my classroom where there is a lot of communication but at the same time a form of discipline as well for the sake of classroom decorum and for the sake of maintaining peace for others to work in. Mind you, Ms Wiz was also of the same opinion and would not sacrifice decorum in the classroom for the sake of activity. Form Three at St. Barnabus could have fun, but Ms Wiz held them responsible for maintaining some discipline in the classroom. I may not be a paranormal operator, but I have unique ways of keeping peace and having fun, whether it be in a PYP, MYP, IGCSE, or IBDP classroom. Even if I am placed in a higher MYP or IBDP or A Levels classroom, I will make that classroom colourful and lively like a PYP classroom. Truly, I saw a lot of myself in the personality of Ms Wiz, and I hope to emulate her to a greater extent as the PGCITE course continues this year.

    Special Note

    If you are interested in more book reviews, indie author interviews, book analyses, short story analyses, poems, essays, essay analyses, and other bookish content, check out my blog, insaneowl.com. If you are interested in purchasing my books, you can check the products page of my blog or on Amazon. There is a lot of good stuff to buy! Happy reading to you always!

    ©2025 Fiza Pathan

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