Jemmy Button

Product Information

students may be able to relate to leaving "home" and having to try and make themselves feel at home somewhere else. This can open the dialogue of innate and learnt behaviours, can we really change the way people behave to fit our ideology?

Despite initial appearances, this is a very complex picture book which introduces issues way beyond its apparent simplicity. But other than the author mentioning that the boy missed the boughs of the trees and the night sky on his island home, the reader is never told about the difficulties that he must have faced in trying to assimilate into white society.It is definitely a book which will provoke discussion and debate about cultural identity, the rights of an individual (particularly a child) and the power of a dominant culture which can disregard both issues in pursuit of its own agenda. This emphasis to children of the importance of staying true to your own beliefs and traditions where ever you may be in the world.

Another activity that I would do with students would be to highlight geography and how the world trades and interacts with each other by the spread of culture. Wally Wombat We are human animals Well Done Mummy Penguin Wendy and the Wallpaper Cat What Degas Saw What Does the Crocodile Say?The Story of Ruth Asawa All the Colours I See Anonymouse Around the world in 24 farmers markets Bambini e Bambole Become an Architect with Tadao Ando The Big Bang and other farts The Best Bad Day Ever Be a work in progress Bienvenue Chez Moi Birds of a Feather Black and White Busy Little Fingers Camminando nel bosco C'est Ma Maison Chapeau! Jemmy Button by Jennifer Uman and Valerio Vidali is a book that takes readers on an adventure about a boy’s young life and how his whole perspective on life changed when he left his island. I know that this is a book for children, and I appreciate that the stories of lesser-known figures in history are being told, but I can’t co-sign a book that presents the story of white men taking a child away from his parents and parading him around England like a pet or a side show, as a morally neutral event. But I was uncomfortable with the way in which the book glossed over the larger implications of colonialism and the ways that western exploration affected the societies that it touched and exploited.