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Connecting to prior knowledge
Before reading The Peasant Prince, written by Li Cunxin and illustrated by Anne Spudvilas, read out the quote on the flap of the dust jacket:
‘This is your one chance. You have your secret dreams. Follow them! Make them come true!”
Have students select a piece of paper in a colour that inspires their dreams or hopes. Have them jot down one to five secret dreams in the centre of the page before sharing and discussing with another student. Each pair will select one dream to share and cut a simple border into their page to represent it, e.g. wing shapes for flying, a sail shape for sailing. They can then join up with another pair to discuss their shared dreams. The group can brainstorm how to achieve the dreams and ‘make them come true’.
Follow up by reading The Peasant Prince aloud. Point out that it alludes to other texts, e.g. a fable about a frog in a well and a folktale about a bow shooter. On a second reading of The Peasant Prince, pause at these stories to give students time to discuss what they might mean. Read The Frog King by the Brothers Grimm (here, here or here) and display Shaun Tan‘s sculpture based on this story from The Singing Bones. If you cannot access the book, an image is also available in this 2016 Guardian article.
Give students the opportunity to recall and research other folktales and fables. They can then individually create a clay image/model of a character from a tale of their choice. Label the model with a title and display it on a relevant surface or stand such as a log, ripples, or a shoe (other images from The Singing Bones may provide inspiration).
Exploring the text in context of our community, school and ‘me’
The Chinese community in Australia has a long history. It might be useful to trace its contributions to Australian culture over time. Many students will have Chinese heritage like Li Cunxin. Have the class scan the book to find examples of Chinese culture. If they are comfortable to do so, students with Chinese heritage could share some similarities and differences between their lives and Li’s life as portrayed in the book.
Finish by giving every student two sticky notes. Have them record one thing that they have in common with Li’s life (at any point in the story) and one thing that is different. Let students move around the room and share their thoughts with others. Students can focus on circumstances and objects, as well as thoughts and feelings.
Rich assessment task
Once Li becomes a famous dancer, many news stories are written about him. Read the articles on p. 29 and discuss how they are written.
Discuss local heroes. In pairs, students select one local hero to research. Share some examples of newspaper articles that celebrate a hero. Students can work with their partner to create a newspaper article. Provide them with a checklist of inclusions such as written text, a photo, and a catchy headline.
Responding to the text
The Peasant Prince is a tale of overcoming adversity. Have students view this short video in which Li speaks about his book, his memories and stories of overcoming difficulties and problems. In small groups students can discuss Li’s character development and prepare to write a character profile.
Have groups choose three different points throughout the story and study every aspect of Li – including his characteristics and feelings – at each point. One group member will represent Li while the remaining group members sculpt the student to demonstrate Li’s feelings. This will help students to visualise Li’s progress from tentative child to confident adult. Afterwards, each group can write a character profile for Li. Display the profiles in the classroom. These will be referred to at the end of the unit.
Now, in pairs, students can recall or research stories about a person who used courage to overcome adversity and achieve something worthwhile (e.g. Turia Pitt, Cathy Freeman). Each pair should present relevant information about their chosen person (e.g. where they were born, what happened that changed their lives, what they achieved and when) in poster format. Invite students to share their posters with the class.
Students can then compare and contrast The Peasant Prince with another picture book adapted from a real adult memoir: The Little Refugee* by Anh and Suzanne Do, illustrated by Bruce Whatley. Both books follow a child from another country who moves to Australia and becomes very successful. Have students develop a series of questions they would like to ask Li or Anh Do. This can include questions about their goals and emotions. Ask students to prioritise their questions, then divide the class into groups and place a student from each group in a hot-seat to answer some of the questions.
* Reading Australia title
Exploring plot, character, setting and theme
Turn through the book and read out any descriptions of the three major settings: Li’s village, Beijing and America. Have students sketch each setting and annotate the sketch with descriptive words and phrases from the book.
Discuss and contrast the settings. What do students notice about each setting and how it relates to the development of the narrative? Guide them to realise that the improvement in setting emulates the improvement in Li’s lifestyle and mood.
In small groups, students can create freeze frames to show how Li’s emotions match the three settings. Provide devices for students to capture the freeze frames. Then allow time for students to locate other images that could represent scenes from the book. These may be physically similar or evoke similar emotions. Encourage students to use sites like Pexels, Unsplash and Openverse, which provide freely available imagery. Once they have located some images, they should write a caption for each one to explain its link to the story.
Rich assessment task
The Peasant Prince is a rags-to-riches tale. Ask students to form pairs and discuss what this term means. They will then work together to tell an original rags-to-riches tale in the form of a comic strip (three to six panels). Each pair will create a fictional character whose circumstances change and improve. They could also incorporate the theme of overcoming adversity. Students can complete this task on paper or using Read Write Think’s Comic Creator (or similar).
Examining text structure and organisation
Examine the visual literacy choices and techniques used by the illustrator Anne Spudvilas. The imprint page informs us that she used ‘traditional Chinese ink and watercolour on rice paper, and oil paints on canvas’. Put students in small groups with copies of the book and ask them to try to identify these media (it seems that the oils are used when Li is in America). Students can then examine the composition of each page to see ‘what is put where’.
Now, in pairs, students can create blank books with the same number of pages as The Peasant Prince (follow one of the tutorials from Early Learning Ideas or Brightly). They will first use a light-coloured crayon to shade the approximate amount of space on each page that is filled by illustrations, using the corresponding pages in the book as a guide. This will demonstrate where Spudvilas has used large illustrations and vignettes (small illustrations). Explore the effects of these choices, including where white space is used as a framing device. Next, students can explore salience to see what is most prominent. They should use a dark crayon to outline where an important figure is placed in the foreground or drawn to take up space. Finally, they can use bright red, orange or yellow crayons to mark the places where those colours appear, such as the light from the candle.
Revise the features of a narrative. As a whole class, and then in small groups, examine the structure of The Peasant Prince. A framing device is seen at the beginning and end of the book. It is easily identified because it is shown in italics (pp. 1 and 35). Discuss how this text frames the main story to create a beginning and ending that is written in a different style. The tale of the frog in the well is also shown in italics. Students should identify that this story is framed by white space inside a coloured block. Explore why it may be formatted differently from the other text.
Examining grammar and vocabulary
Teach or revise what symbols are by referring to a dictionary or other online resource. Have pairs of students search for symbols in The Peasant Prince (e.g. the frog, the weeping willows) and write a few sentences on each one to explain how it is a symbol and what it represents.
A major symbol in the book is the kite with paper wishes. Have students construct a kite like Li’s (follow a tutorial from CBeebies or Inner Child Fun) and attach their own ‘paper wishes’. Display these either in some tree branches that you have collected from outside, or in front of a weeping willow backdrop.
Return to the tale of the frog in The Peasant Prince. Remind students that it is written in italics and framed by white space inside a coloured block (p. 4). Display this page to refresh their memories. Re-read the tale, underlining the dialogue and highlighting the noun groups. Students can record repetitive words such as ‘little frog’ and ‘deep, dark well’ on paper. Have them compare this more traditional style of storytelling with contemporary texts, which have less repetition and fewer adjectives. Students can then write a dialogue between a child and parent using strong nouns and verbs, trying to avoid using too many adjectives and adverbs (in line with more contemporary storytelling styles).
Rich assessment task
Return to the books students constructed at the start of this learning sequence. Refresh their learning by examining the composition of the text:
- What is put where?
- What is prominent?
Prompt students to note the mixture of large and small illustrations and the colour choices.
Each student will then illustrate an original scene depicting a family, a dancer or a frog. This should be done as a double-page spread. Students will demonstrate their understanding of composition, salience and other techniques from the book by incorporating character(s), ink, colour (preferably watercolours, in keeping with Spudvilas’ style) and white space.
Students will complete their illustration with one, two or three paragraphs of carefully-placed written text.
Read and view some traditional tales, particularly Aboriginal Dreaming stories. There are many examples in the More Resources section of Reading Australia’s teaching resource for The Rainbow Serpent* by Dick Goobalathaldin Roughsey. Videos are available for the stories of the Butu Wugun (black crow) and Wilbung (magpie), as well as Tiddalik the frog. The latter is especially relevant because, like the tale in The Peasant Prince, it involves a frog and water.
* Reading Australia title
Students can make finger puppets to represent the characters from a traditional story they have explored. It may be more appropriate to use a fable or fairytale so that they do not appropriate cultural knowledge. Useful tutorials for making finger puppets include:
- Access Art – Making Finger Puppets
- Art With Amita – DIY Finger Puppets | How To Make Finger Puppet Animals Step by Step
- Easy Crafts DIY – DIY Finger Puppets | How To Make Finger Puppets For Kids
Add facial and other features using materials such as wool, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, sequins and markers. Students can then use the puppets to retell their chosen story in pairs or small groups. You might invite some other students to watch. You can also record the retellings and use it as the basis for a short script.
Ask students to think about, and then quickly list as a timeline, some of the most significant memories from their own lives. They will then compose a memoir of their life so far. This should be between one and two pages in length and typed in Roman (non-italic) font to emulate the main narrative of The Peasant Prince. Subheadings may be used if desired. Students also have the option to include something that they hope might happen to them in the future.
Display the character profiles students created in the Responding section. Allow time for students to observe each group’s work. Ask:
- What descriptions are common across the profiles?
- Identify words and descriptions unique to some profiles.
Read about some of the current dancers with the Australian Ballet. Reform the groups that created the profiles and have them jointly construct a descriptive paragraph about Li as a dancer. They can borrow words and phrases from their own or other groups’ profiles. The paragraph should be suitable for publication on the Australian Ballet website if Li was dancing with them today.
Rich assessment task
During this unit of work, among other things, students have been learning about framing techniques. In The Peasant Prince, white space is used to frame some of the illustrations, and italic text to frame the story about Li’s childhood and life. Students are to demonstrate their understanding of these techniques by framing the memoir they wrote with an introductory paragraph, as well as a concluding paragraph. They should use an italic font for this text.
Students can display their typed memoirs next to a photograph of themselves, both inside a white cardboard frame.
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