3D Review, ‘Is it a Mermaid?’ by Candy Gourlay and Francesca Chessa – Story Sack

To round up our week long 3D features celebrating Candy Gourlay and Francesca Chessa’s beautiful picture book ‘Is it a Mermaid?’ we bring you a story sack constructed around the book.

Before we start let’s have a quick reminder of what a story sack is. Story Sacks are fun education tools, which can be used to help children immerse in a book and gain greater understanding of the story. They typically include…

• A good quality fiction book, (picture book or novel)
• A non-fiction book related to the story and themes in the chosen picture book. 
• Toys, (ideally a soft toy for younger children). 
• A game or activity also related to the theme of the chosen fiction book. 
• Optional worksheet based on the story and themes off the story sack. 

Books…

Obviously the fiction book is the lovely ‘Is it a Mermaid?’ but we have paired it with Manatees & Dugongs by James Powell, which although may be a bit advanced for very young readers, contains many beautiful colours photographs and illustrations, plus facts to dip in and out of.

TOYS…

For the toys we obviously needed a Dugong, this is not the easiest plush to find but we did find a reasonably priced one by Colorata, which is available from Amazon, Ebay and The World Wildlife Fund. Beware though many people advertise Dugong plush toys that are actually manatees, TIP – look at the tail, if it is like a dolphin (or mermaid) it is indeed a dugong, if it more like a club it’s a manatee!


For Bel and Benji, we had an equally difficult search, as it is very difficult to find plush doll in any other ethnicity but white. However I have found a company that do plush toys in a range of ethnicities and both genders, for a reasonable price. The company is Lanka Kade, and you can buy directly from their website or other toy shops, (I got mine from a museum). To make them even better they are suitable to play with from birth, are handcrafted and are fair trade.

Games...

Again, as Dugongs are not the most well-known of animal, there are few games featuring them, there are a few, one where you mix up animals and fight, which isn’t really in keeping with the book and another conservation card/ board game which is quite pricey and advanced (for more info press here) , so we have made a kind of match the tail to the animal pairs game. This should be easy to do either by drawing or, using clip-art/internet images. So have fun and create!

Thank you for stopping by and reading out 'Is it a Mermaid' Features. Please do pop back again!