Prior to our trip to the Louisville Zoo, we used many Eric Carle books to learn about the animals we would see. We also studied Eric Carle himself and the style of art he uses to create his books. We went to his website and viewed videos of him creating his pages. We saw his studio. The children were inspired and decided to create our own book. We had read Eric Carle's book, Do You Want to Be My Friend. We decided to use this as our basic idea. We did a study of Africa and it's three main regions: desert, rainforest and grasslands. We learned about many animals that live in each region. We then selected the animals we wanted to put in our book.
To create our book, we began by creating our pages. We needed background pages (blues), rainforest trees, vines (greens), water (deeper blues), tree trunks (browns), grasslands (brownish, yellowish, green), and the different colors and patterns of the animals. Then we divided into groups to create the pages. Some children worked on the backgrounds of the pages (rivers, rainforest, grasslands, coast) and some chose to create animals, either alone or working with a friend. I gave very little assistance! I was amazed at the product we created!
We had to decide on who our main character would be. In Do You Want to Be My Friend, the main character was a mouse who traveled around looking for a friend. He finally found another mouse, just the right size! We had to find an animal that would be able to travel to all the regions of Africa. We decided a bird could do this easily! We wanted a tropical looking bird, similar to the colorful birds we would see in the Lorakeet house at the zoo.
Author's note: One of the most popular animals at the zoo are the peacocks who roam freely. We included one in our book, although it probably wouldn't be found in Africa!)
