 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher and today I'm going to share with you some of my favorite picture books about cheeky animals. So I was inspired to film this video based on a book that a colleague of mine had shared with me last year and that was Oh No George by Chris Horton which is a delightful book about a very cheeky dog who just kind of can't help himself. So George doesn't really want to get into trouble and doesn't want to do naughty things but he kind of can't help himself and his owner Harris is going out and says, you know, will you be good George? And George is like, yes, yes, I'll be good. I'll be very good. And George is trying to be good but then George sees things and has to stop and think what will George do? And of course you can imagine the sort of chaos that ensues but it's very endearing because I mean just look at this face he's very cute and adorable. This is a really great book in the classroom for talking about making positive choices and thinking through your actions. It's also really great for talking about impulse control because young children don't always have the best impulse control and that's fine because they're still learning. It also does highlight that even if you do something wrong it doesn't make you a bad person and I think that's a really important message in books that you can make a mistake and you can have a consequence and you can learn from it and you can get better and people aren't going to stay mad at you because Harris can't stay mad at George because I mean just look at him. There's also a really great story for introducing questions and question marks because they are in the text and it's also a really great book for making predictions throughout the text but also at the end of the text as we try and figure out what will George do next. I read this with my class last year and they absolutely loved it. I'm really excited to read it with kids this year. Haven't had a chance yet but it's coming. This book is going back to school so I can read it because it's great. Another book that I absolutely adore because of the cuteness factor is Fluff by Heidi McKinnon. I mean just look at this face. A bit like George, Fluff is very adorable, cute and fluffy and just gets into absolutely everything around the house. How could you resist this face? But even this adorable pet occasionally does things that just causes its owner to ask, what are you doing Fluff? And it is so cute and so heartwarming and so funny and it's a really great conversation starter for kids with pets to make connections or what sort of things do your pets do at home that may not always be the right thing to do but you kind of forgive them because they're very cute. It's a very engaging book for kids. They absolutely love looking through this one. I like this book because there's a variety of sentence lengths in the story from one to two words to slightly longer sentences while still being very accessible for foundation to two year two students. And I think one of the questions that I always loved asking my students after reading it was how would you feel with Fluff as a pet? And it always prompted some really interesting discussions. This is an absolutely gorgeous book with a very cute, very cheeky cat. Then there is Pig the Pug by Aaron Blaby, which people will probably be familiar with. Pig the Pug is pretty well known and Pug is a fairly greedy, fairly self-centered pug who just likes doing things his way. He does live with another dog Trevor and Trevor is very sweet and tries to be Pig's friend but of course Pig just finds himself getting into all sorts of chaos. I have pretty much every book in the Pig the Pug series now. They're all hilarious. Kids love them because Pig just does some truly outrageous things that they know are the wrong thing to do which is a really great conversation starter as to okay well why are those things the wrong thing to do? It is hilarious. It has great rhyming texts that just engages kids. Quite often they learn it off by heart and they end up reading it alongside with you. These books always do have a moral whether it's don't be greedy or be a better friend or don't eat all of the lollies or the candy. Listen to the advice people are giving you and those are really great discussion points for kids because often they pick up on them because they're fairly obvious which sometimes in picked books the moral is not always obvious and kids find it really hard to work that out but in these books it's pretty clear and it means it's a really great discussion jumping off point. It's also a really great one for discussing friendship traits particularly between Pig and Trevor and also for talking about feelings and expressions on people's faces because again they're fairly obvious in this book. Let me come back to another cat book and this time we have Bad Cat by Nicola Roburn. This is just hilarious because this bad cat is kind of like the pig the pug of the cat world so where you have Fluff who is who looks cute and fluffy and you kind of forgive all the time bad cat does things on purpose like this and in this story Fluffikins just gets up to all sorts of chaos. The owner wants them to apologize but of course Fluffikins is their own cat and does things in a very cat-like way. They are still adorable and endearing and it's just a really fun read. I know that Bad Cat and Fluff are two of the favorite cat books in my classroom last year like I went on the shelf and I never saw them because kids just wanted to keep reading them. There are hilarious illustrations in this book the expressions on Bad Cat's face are top-notch and are also really good for conversations around expressions and how you know what Bad Cat is feeling at this time. This also has varied sentence lengths so it does make for a very interesting read also great for a mentor text on varied sentence length and how you can use that to keep the reader's attention. It's great for predictions and also finding evidence for why you think something is about to happen. It also has a really great voice in this book. The text size changes and varies you can tell when the narrator in the story is getting frustrated and that also makes it a really great mentor text for how can you convey different emotions just through words on a page. Then we come to two books that do not feature pet animals. So the first one is Bin Chicken by Kate and Joel Temple. This one's illustrated by Rona Joy Gosh. Bin chickens are Australian white ibis birds and mostly you see them in Sydney and they're called bin chickens because they like to take food and things out of bins and they're kind of the outcasts of the bird society here in Australia and most people are not a fan of them and in this book Kate and Joel Temple really play around with the reputation that bin chickens have. This is a really great book for discussing why people do or don't like bin chickens. It would be also great for older readers to think about well why do you think bin chickens have evolved to become the kings and queens of the trash heap in the bird world. This book is built around the colloquialism of a bin chicken so it's really great for older readers to unpack what that actually means and how that might have come about. It's also pretty fun because it is a rhyming text. This one is more text heavy than some of the other books in this list but it is a really fun exploration of a quirky Australian bird. And then finally the last book I want to mention is Not Cute by Phillip Bunting and this is all about a quokka who is sick of people telling it that it's cute. At the back of the book there is an ace up quote that probably inspired this book which says, the stubborn listen to nobody's advice and become a victim of their own delusions because in this book quokka is dressing up to try and be fierce or different like other animals and all the other animals are kind of laughing at it going oh you're so cute and it gets more and more frustrated to the point where it starts attacking other animals and then finally meets its comeuppance when along comes a snake. Despite being a deceptively simple text in terms of how much text it is in the book and how simple and repetitive it is just for the fact alone that there is that quote at the back of the book it would be great to explore with middle and upper primary school students about why do you think the author chose to explore this idea of a character who doesn't listen to anyone's advice. So there's lots of scope there for discussions but it's also really great for younger readers because it is a simple text that is really funny they think it's hilarious. There's really great opportunities for predicting in this book and also for learning a little bit more about the animals that are mentioned in this story it's a great jumping off point for that. Also it just has really fun quirky little illustrations and is fun to look at. All right so those are some cheeky animal recommendations. In the comments I'd love to know if you have a picture book recommendation for some cheeky animals. I always love finding those books. Animals in books do make up a significant portion of picture books out there and I know that we want to see more diverse representation but every now and then there's a moral in a story that can really be helped along by a cute and quirky little animal character particularly for younger readers. If you want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment for free to leave your favorite animal emoji down below otherwise I hope that we're everywhere in the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.