Smon Smon

By Sonja Danowski

  • is a German artist.

  • NorthSouth Books 2018

  • 4-8

Batchelder Honor Book recipient, Sonja Danowski, takes us on a journey into a beautiful, mysterious world where cooperation and generosity save the day and friendships make it wonderful.

This book is weird and wonderful. And we love weird. Bizarre stories that trigger children and make them want to talk and prove their point.

The story is lovely and the illustrations are so cozy and warm, it’s such a joy even just holding and having this masterpiece. I love Sonja’s artistic style and creativity but with this book I chose to work mostly with the alien words. We briefly talked about friendship and helping those in need, and moved on to decoding her language.

Smon Smon wonderfully marries up with learning about nouns, verbs and adjectives. This book can become a wholesome language project for curious kids.

I asked my students first to roughly translate alien words. If your class are too young it will probably be enough. But Year 1 students can already do more.

Here are our ideas:

Tell your students how to use the dictionary. Google different words so they can see the layout of an online dictionary.

Talk about definitions.

Explain to your students what nouns are and how we use them.

Make dictionary entries to see how it works. For example, Smon Smon - noun a creature living on the planet Gon Gon.

Gon Gon - noun a planet in the middle of nowhere, inhabited by Smon Smons and Klon Klons.

Encourage your students to write good definitions, avoiding one-word entries.

The next step will be to create their own words. You can stick with nouns or ask them to coin some verbs or adjectives to fit the story.

Your group can go even further and make The Smon Smon Anatomy. They can label the body parts or write descriptions.

The Smon Smon is a small creature, approximately 10 inches tall. Some can grow to 12 inches but it is rare (not including their expanding neck).

Their head is circular with a rosy-red face and bow-shaped eyebrows.

Their limbs are plump and short which makes them look clumsy and childlike.

The most distinguishing feature is their outstanding neck. It can stretch and grow like an accordion or an extendable pipe that human plumbers use. Some say, it reminds them of a vacuum cleaner.