Teaching With Uncertain Fables

Book Review: Zachary and the Great Potato Catastrophe by Junia Wonders

The rhymes are cute and the illustrations are wonderful.

I’m not sure what the message is meant to be, nor the age of the audience for this book.

The moral might be that sharing is good, greed is bad and both have consequences. The fact that the protagonist is stealing without considering the effect it might have on the person he’s stealing from is a bit blurry. The character stolen from gets very angry and violent. That part of the story, the crime and punishment / black & white consequences lacks moral resonance for me.

This story could still generate interesting discussions in a class of 7 to 9 year olds. It would be a case of letting them run with the discussion and then working on that as the teachable moments unfold.