Archive | March 7, 2016

Rescue Ark

Rescue Ark

Rescue Ark

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Rescue Ark

Susan Hall

Naomi Zouwer

NLA Publishing, 2014

36pp., pbk., RRP $A18.99

9780642278104

 

The animals went in two by two,

Hurrah, Hurrah,

The animals went in two by two,

Hurrah, Hurrah,

The possums and the potoroos

Were yawning and getting ready to snooze,

And they all snuggled into the ark

To find a safe place to be.

 

The children are so distressed at the waste and rubbish littering the ground, the polluted land and the dry rivers which threatened that habitats of Australia’s creatures that they built an ark to rescue them. Then they travelled around Australia to find the creatures that needed their help most.  From the orange-bellied parrot of Victoria to the Spectacled Flying Fox of Queensland to the Gove Crow Butterfly to the native bee of Western Australia, the most endangered of our creatures get on board, all of whom are looking for a safe place to be.  Each is listed as ‘critically endangered’, ‘endangered’ or “vulnerable’ according to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act  and each has their story and situation described in the pages at the end with illustrations from the  NLA collection and other publications.

Using the familiar rhyme and rhythm of the well-known children’s song, and beginning with a map of the ark’s destinations around Australia and then a series of clever collages, readers are introduced to some of Australia’s lesser-known creatures and how they are suffering because of human impact on the landscape – a powerful way to inspire a new generation to be more aware and to right the wrongs of previous ones.  With Clean Up Australia Day as strong now as it was when it began in 1989 (7092 sites were officially registered for this year’s clean up on March 5) there is clearly an awareness that there is a need to do better if our children’s children are to see these unique creatures.

The good news is that in the story the ark sails the seas “for many a day” but eventually can return to our shores because the children have achieved their goal of making the land safe for them again.

This is not just a book for pre-schoolers – it has great scope for introducing elements of the Australian Curriculum focusing on human impact on the environment and sustainability.  While most are familiar with kangaroos, koalas and our other unique iconic wildlife, telling the stories of the less visible is critical if we are to improve our conservation record.  Australia has more than one million known species and a huge proportion of these are endemic to our shores, yet “Australia has the highest loss of mammal species anywhere in the world”.   So even though this book was published in 2014 it remains very relevant not only as a springboard to an investigation and community action but also as a model for the students to create their own version of the rhyme or to design a partition in the ark that would meet the needs of their chosen creature.

Teaching notes, including blackline masters of the creatures, are available.