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FEATHERING OUR NESTS: O-MAMA’s Perspective on SPRING CLEANING

Spring is in the air.  The birds and the bees are flitting around doing their thing…nature abounds.  The birds are feathering their nests and laying their eggs, while the bees are busy pollinating every flower in the garden.  The air is crisp and clean.  Chirping and buzzing fills the air.

Everything seems fresh and new.  So, let’s take a new look at Spring, shall we? The first thing that comes to mind is cleaning. Ugggh.  But, let's talk about the birds and the bees instead...the part of the story that happens...

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The Snail and the Whale
  • By Julia Donaldson • 10 Comments
  • Tagged in: For Kids
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“This is the whale who came one night

When the tide was high and the stars were bright.

A humpback whale, immensely long,

Who sang to the snail a wonderful song

Of shimmering ice and coral caves

And shooting stars and enormous waves.”

This book is a wonderful Summer reading adventure for you and your kids.  The tale is told in beautiful rhyming verse and Axel Scheffler’s illustrations are extraordinary.  Even my somewhat “older” girls still like hearing this one read aloud.  And of course the little ones always love the rhyming books; they sound like songs and make them much more fun!

The story is sort-of a maritime version of the old lion and mouse fable.  Remember the great big scary lion who spares the mouse one day and the mouse promises to some day help the lion?  The lion scoffs, but true to his word, when the lion is caught in a trap, the mouse is the only one small enough to climb up and gnaw on the twine and set him free.

This too is a great story of friendship and risk, and the lengths we will go to for someone we care about.  Against the advice of his snail friends, one brave snail wants to see the world so he hitches a ride on a humpback whale and they see it all: tropical islands, volcanoes, penguins and icebergs.  They have a lovely time until the day the whale swims too close to shore and accidentally beaches himself.  Can the tiny snail help to save the giant whale?  Can something so small even make a difference? 

And the message is of course, yes, we learn, when the tiny snail helps her new, very large friend in a big way! 

My younger daughter always also comments on the snail’s initial bravery—his  dream to travel to far off lands, his willingness to just hop aboard the humpback whale and see the world!  This is huge—his utter trust in the great whale and his sense that there is a great big world out there—places beyond his little snail rock with his snail pals and that he may have to put himself “out there” and see some of it!!

(For the record, I am not a big traveler—more of a nester, don’t like to venture too far from home.  As I’ve gotten older and more attached to people—like my husband and my kids—I am more and more afraid of flying.  The fact that I did the backpack through Europe thing” after graduating college is mind-boggling to me.   Who was that girl?  Anyway, so I too am in awe of the little snail who just hops aboard—sort-of “devil may care”, and then trusts the giant whale to watch over him as he shows him the world. )

“And she gazed at the sky, the sea, the land,

The waves and the caves and the golden sand.

She gazed and gazed, amazed by it all,

And she said to the whale, “I feel so small.”