“The great, big, enormous turnip” tells the story of an old man who plants a little turnip hopping it would grow strong. But his wishing is so huge, that he will need many hands to pull it up. By this retelling, Alexei Tolstoy, leads young readers to involve themselves with the values of cooperation, teamwork and diversity.
The little turnip grows great, big and enormous being impossible for the old man to pull it up by himself. For this reason, he calls for help to the old woman. But as their strength is not enough, he goes on asking for help and joining more people and animals who accept to cooperate with the old man despite the differences they may have as regards culture, age, race and gender. In fact, it is not until they are all together hauling the turnip up at the same time and direction, that the big plant comes up.
Tolstoy’s retelling is great for young learners of the English language. Its repetitive use of the regular and a few irregular verbs in the past tense and the reiteration of lexical items that children are familiar with, make the book and effective resource; easy for children to understand and enjoy while learning collective principles in the foreign language.
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