We read the wonderful picture book ‘The Little Bookshop and the Origami Army’ by Michael Foreman and had a great conversation about the key messages in the book and how people in the story are making good or bad choices.

What are the bad choices that people are trying to make in the book?

• AW – The man is sad because they were going to knock over the bookshop.
• ZS – They want to make a big super store.
• AW – They might think that the superstore would be better than the book shop?
• AMcK – They mayor wants to build it. He thinks the superstore would be better.

The mayor owns the superstore so if he builds it what will he get?

• FS – He will be in charge.
• CK – He will get more attention.
• AW – He will get more money.

Who tries to fix the problem?

• JH – Origami Girl!

How does she try and fix the problem?

• ZS – By getting all the favourite characters to come so all the children will come and show that they love the book shop.

The first thing she does is go to parliament. What is parliament?

We talked about the parliament in London and the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. We talked about the job of a parliament.

We noticed that the writer of the book doesn’t think the Members of Parliament are much use!

So what do they do to solve the problem?

LMcF -Origami Girl gets the characters and a huge army of children.

CK – They all go to the Little Bookshop. They don’t fight. It is like a team. The mayor likes the kids and the kids like the characters. So the Mayor cares about the children and the books.

AW – All his kids like the books.

FS – They are all fussed about the bookshop.

So what does the book tell us we should do if we care about something? 

AW – The people care about the children so they make them a park.

FS – We should care about the world.

ZS – To make a good choice and don’t do the bad choice that you are thinking about.

AW – Tell the people not to do it! Tell them it will make you sad.

JH – Tell them it is really important to you.