Six Silly Sharks

An embarrassingly long time ago, I was the lucky recipent of an email from the great Judy Sierra. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I was delighted to read it. Apparently Ms. Sierra (I cannot bring myself to call her Judy although I am sure she would not mind, benevolent soul that she is) stumbled upon my lowly blog and offered to share a preview of the new, third edition of her classic The Flannel Board Storytelling Book.

All youth librarians should be familiar with this book. I first heard of it in a children's literature class in library school and I have been turning to it ever since. The third edition is available as a PDF download on Etsy for $9.95. I think it's wonderful to be able to see her work in color and love that the price is so affordable, unlike many professional reference books. I love the fabric collage technique Sierra recommends, so that's what I've chosen to share with you in this week's Flannel Friday post. 

I already have made flannel versions of many of the stories in the third edition, so the one I chose to make is "Six Silly Sharks." I did adapt the technique to save myself a little time. I think Sierra's method of ironing stabilizer onto fabric choices is going to hold up a lot better in the long run. I simply cut the shapes out of fabric samples because I am a cheaty-mccheaterson. 

The gist of this story is that two rabbit friends are separated by a body of water and trick a bunch of sharks into lining up so the rabbits can be reunited. I did find the rabbit patterns to be too small for me to cut easily so I reused the rabbits from The Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings. I hope that explains the incredible disproportional-ness of the resulting figures.