I have been doing some story times about the mail and the post office. I found this beautiful watercolor book in Infosoup that I was immediately drawn to because of the Scottish flavor. The book is said to be set on the island of Struay---that is fictional but it IS based on the real life ISLE OF COLL which is in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland.
We began by talking about how it would be to live on an island and have the mail brought there by boat. Our protagonist, Katie, is told to deliver the mail by her parents. Katie's younger baby sibling is cutting a tooth and they have their hands full! Katie has 5 packages to deliver. One is for her grandmother. That is easy because it has a red tag on it. It contains a part that is needed to repair the grandmother's tractor. The other four packages are labeled. Katie has an accident where she falls in the water and the packages lose their delivery information and are all mixed up!
Katie delivers each package to the stoop of own of the known recipients but she gets all of them wrong. Last call, she goes to her grandmother. Katie explains the accident to her grandmother. Grandmother repairs the tractor and takes Katie to each location once more to check on the deliveries and recitfy the mistakes.
The sweet ending is when Katie is delivered home by her grandmother and her grandmother tells them how wonderful Katie is without telling on her. I love this intergenerational story about problem solving and fixing one's errors.
Copyright: 1984 and apparently part of a beloved series!
I want to note here, too, that a grandma at story time is the mother of a postal worker. (We are rural.)
She told me that for some people on her daughter's route, the mail delivery is their ONLY human contact during the day. Wow! What a (tragic) concept!
I mean, look at that plaid skirt! Look at those sheep!
Story map I developed for the story.
