Additional information
by Tanya Saunders (Author), Lorena Villegas-Cid (Illustrator)
"A book for ambitious language learners!"
Playfully deploying synonyms, rhyme, alliteration and imagination, "Mr Mellow Likes Yellow" invites readers to consider the question: Can we hold opposing opinions, yet still stay friends?
Mr Mellow likes yellow, but what about red, orange, green and blue, plus all the other colours too? (Not forgetting their many varied shades and hues!) Can his quirky animal crew persuade bright, bimodal* Mr Mellow that there's more to like than saffron yellow?
*Mr Mellow is deaf; to help him hear, he wears a hearing aid on one ear and a cochlear implant on the other.
This inclusive story for elementary/KS1 children stars Mr Mellow, a cool dude who has a pet skink, dresses nattily in yellow, and is deaf. Along the way, we meet a host of fantastical animals who simply cannot agree with each other...
A funny, exuberant and raucous read for children who enjoy learning ambitious language, the book will get them laughing while reciting along with the rollicking rhyming verse, as it builds from page to page. With each page turn, the narrative expands, each time adding a new colour, a new creature, and a new twist to the tale... and culminating in a celebratory feast of colour and rich language!
"A favourite with Teachers of the Deaf"
The book allows children who use assistive hearing technology to see themselves represented (through the totally fabulous Mr Mellow) and shows everyone, whether they have hearing loss or not, that wearing hearing aids and/or cochlear implants is really very cool indeed!
For those parents and therapists who wish to use it as a speech and language development resource, the book integrates listening and spoken language (LSL) strategies, including:
Audition before vision: New characters and new colours are described in words on the page before we actually see them, allowing the child's brain to process the auditory information prior to the visual information.
Talking ahead - what comes next? As the book introduces new colours and new characters one by one, the reader and the child can have great fun guessing and discussing which colour and which character might be revealed next.
Practicing auditory closure: Structured as a poem which repeats and builds as the pages turn, the book offers multiple opportunities to practice auditory closure (the reader pauses and allows the child to fill in the next word).
Strengthening auditory memory: Children will naturally want to join in with reciting the poem as it repeats and builds throughout the book. The reader can pause periodically to allow the child to recite as much as they can from memory.
Expansion of vocabulary: This book celebrates colour... but it doesn't just utilise the most common names for the most common colours! It also describes the properties of different colours and what they represent.
Developing emotional intelligence and theory of mind: A central concept woven into the book is the exploration of preferences: different people like different things - in the book, this is expressed through different characters liking different colours for different reasons. This can open up wonderful discussions with children about their own preferences, why they have these preferences and why different people might not always feel the same way they do - and why that's okay!
