Meeka


Written by Suzanne Barton
Illustrated by Anil Tortop

For ages 3 to 6

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This book is best for:
  • adjectives
  • describing
  • where questions

Review

Meeka is a little blue bird who loves getting his beak into all the delicious food at the community food markets. He likes crunching on crusty bread, flying through fluffy, puffy fairy floss and licking sweet, sticky toffee. But eating all of the tasty market food leaves Meeka with a sore tummy, and he soon falls into a food-induced slumber. When the time comes to pack up the market stall for the day, Meeka is nowhere to be found! After some clever thinking and a frantic chase, Meeka’s friends find him snoozing in a Moroccan tagine pot sold to a granny at the markets.

Meeka is a gentle story with themes of food, community and the loving bond between father and daughter. The whimsical illustrations and rich descriptive language bring this story alive. With phrases such as “hot, buttery corn on the cob” and “ooey gooey donuts”, Meeka is a brilliant model text to use for teaching the use of adjectives to describe objects. I also love this book for targeting ‘where’ questions as we try to find the cheeky little blue bird on the pages of the book.

For further speech and language goals to target using Meeka, see the list below.
 


Book Details

Story Plot: Losing Tale

Themes:
  • animals - birds
  • community
  • family - father & daughter
  • food

Speech and Language Targets

Speech Sounds:
  • /d/ - dad, dicey, donuts, don't
  • /s/ blends - spicy, stew, sticky, sweet, strawberries, pasta, crusty, asleep
Grammar:
  • adjectives (e.g. spicy, dicey stew; crusty bread; fluffy puffy fairy floss; sweet, juicy strawberries)
  • negatives (don't - e.g. birds don't eat ooey, gooey donuts; not - e.g. not here)
  • plurals (e.g. nuts, donuts, strawberries, birds)
  • prepositions (past, through, over)
  • third person singular tense
  • action verbs (e.g. eat, fly, wash, run)
Semantics:
  • matching
  • labelling (different types of food)
  • describing (tagine pots, food, characters)
  • differences (between tagine pots)
  • compare/contrast (different tagine pots)
  • making inferences
Questions:
  • where (where's Meeka?)
Narrative:
  • sequencing
  • problem
  • resolution
  • direct character speech
Book Info

Published by Bluebell Books in 2017 (ISBN: 9780648099307)

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