Monkey Puzzle by Julia Donaldson is still one of my son’s favourite books. The colourful illustrations and the engaging story of a little monkey lost who is trying to find his mum with the help of a butterfly is sweet and funny at the same time. The animals and the jungle setting inspired us into making a model of the book to play the story over and over. I made the monkey and the spider, but the butterfly, the trees and the snake are my son’s work.

What impressed me the most is the way the snake began its life. It had to be a rattle snake, though not so in the story my son is fascinated by them at the moment so one day as I finished the last piece of cling film he was quick to recognize the thinn cardboard tube as the rattle snake you see in the picture. He drew the whole tube with spots like the perfect snake he had pictured in his imagination and made the rattles by wrapping some rice in tissue paper, which he then secured to one of the tube’s extremities with adhesive tape. The head is simply made of two sides of card cut out into the snake’s head with a felt forked tongue sticking out. To make it a little less rigid he bent the tube in some areas.

Happily shared with the Play Academy.