Written by Sarah Hayes
Illustrations by Jan Ormerod
Entertaining for learners who are in kindergarten, “Eat Up, Gemma” is a story about a baby who doesn’t want to eat her food. Sarah Hayes, the writer, shows in the book the way Gemma’s entire family care about her. They all try to make the toddler eat up her meals.
Gemma is asked to eat by her mother, grandmother, dad and friends, but all she does is throwing, squashing and banging her food. The baby’s relatives get more and more worried as days pass and Gemma continues without eating. Fortunately, the toddler’s little brother finds a clever solution to end with this situation.
Although the story might be interesting for your learners you should be aware of the discriminatory message that can be inferred by reading the book. The context of the story is a black-colored community. Gemma and her relatives are black-colored people who have black-colored friends. It’s not possible to see in Ormerod’s illustrations a person who doesn’t belong to that specific ethnic community. The issue about this is that the characters of the book are presented as a preferential group, segregated from the rest of the people.
If you’re interested in teaching your young learners values and the importance of tolerance towards a multicultural society, this isn’t the book I would recommend you to read them.
No comments:
Post a Comment