Animal Masquerade
By Marianne Dubuc
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is a Canadian writer and illustrator
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First published in 2011
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Animal Masquerade is a little nugget. I read it with my youngest students and it was a success. At this age, lessons should be visual and interactive, with lots of movement and imagination. Animal Masquerade works beautifully because it’s playful, repetitive, and encourages children to think creatively about animals and pretend play.
This book involved a lot of talking, guessing and laughing. We first talked about parties and dressing up. We offered the lion some help and threw in ideas on best costumes.
Then we had a Guess the Animal competition. I was giving away points for smartest and quickest answers. Before showing the pages to the kids, I was describing the animals. For example, the lion wanted to be seen and heard from afar, for that day he wanted to wear a costume of a huge and gentle animal. It looks clumsy. It has thick skin and is not furry. It’s grey. (Every new sentence gave away more about the animal and made it easier to guess.)
The elephant was fed up of being grey and heavy. He wanted to fly and live a very colourful life. He wanted to be the chattiest bird in the world….
Every few animals I would pause the game and talk about our favourite animals. We also chatted about the reasons why some people and animals want to dress up and pretend.
The book celebrates not only animals but famous fairy tale characters.
Unlike a lot of books for younger children, Animal Masquerade is 120 pages long. It’s long enough for you to try different ideas while reading it.
