Thursday, February 6, 2014

Read aloud: Five Little Fiends


When Iris first read the title, she then asked me, "Kenapa fiends, Mummy? Bukan friends ke?" I then too soon realized it was spelled without r. The word never occurred to me until I picked up this book.

This book is about five little fiends, who live in statues on their own far, far away land. Every day they come out to marvel at the world together. It is a good feeling to see the fiends holding hands together while marveling at the world with their backs facing us. We could feel the goodness of friendship and sharing in an instant. They would marvel so much that each fiend desires to hide in his statue the thing he marvels the most. Each fiend then takes for himself the sun, the sky, the land, the sea and the moon. They admire their stolen objects to their heart's content.

Then they started to realize that the world means nothing without the rest. 

'The sun would not stay up without the sky,
the sky was nowhere to be found without the land,
the land started to die without water from the sea,
the sea would not flow without the pull of the moon,
and the moon could not glow without the light from the sun.'

So the five little fiends decide to put everything back in the world as it is. Once they had done that, they were able to appreciate their surroundings again.

Just like any other reviewers, it is questionable why Sarah chose fiends over something else, like monkeys or elephants, or just simply a little human being? Then I thought to myself that maybe she wants the story to be unique as there are many children books with animals or aliens as the main characters. Nonetheless, it still contradicts with my belief that no such fiend would ever live in any statues, (haha.) My girls however, realized "Kenapa muka fiends tu macam tu je?", as I confirmed that they meant the fiends are more likely to be in 'blank slate'.

Other than that, it is a good book. Some points to emphasize over the book are:
1. The importance of sharing
2. True friendship
3. Our world and the purpose for each object (sun, sky, moon etc.)
4. Effect of greed

And the most basic and important question to ask is:
Who created all these?