As a second grade teacher, there are few things more
simultaneously maddening yet chuckle-inducing than the face of a seven year
old when you ask them why they threw a pencil across the room and hit another
kid in the chest. Their brow furrows and their eyes shine with genuine
confusion. This week, I discovered a book that solves the mystery.
The Snurtch,
a picture book written by Sean Ferrell and illustrated by Charles Santoso is about Ruthie, a
little girl with a rather large problem. She likes school and she likes her
classmates, but whenever she tries to do the right thing, the Snurtch
interferes and makes sure she does exactly the wrong thing. She scribbles and
burps and chases. She is rude, she throws pencils, and she makes weird noises.
Only it isn’t Ruthie doing it, it’s the Snurtch, an impish creature that enjoys
wreaking havoc in Ruthie’s life. Ruthie is miserable until she makes a drawing
of the Snurtch and presents it to her class and things begin to change.
The illustrations focus on Ruthie, her Snurtch and her
classmates. The background is mostly white space, which draws the eye to the
main problem of the story. The Snurtch itself is drawn the way Ruthie sees him
and the way a child would draw him. He
looks like a cross between a Tasmanian devil and a dragon as he flies around
eating crayons, pulling pigtails, and knocking kids out of chairs. Ruthie looks
like she is having a bona fide bad day, until she learns to deal with her
Snurtch in her own unique way.
I like the message of the book, that is, that we all have a
Snurtch that likes to meddle in our lives just when we are trying to do our
best to behave. Children in particular might not understand that sometimes you
wake up on the wrong side of bed or things are going on at home that stress you
out. They might not be able to articulate their feelings, hence the look of
confusion when an adult questions their actions.
The Snurtch is a fun way to broach the subject of bad days
and negative feelings that might make a child act out for reasons they don’t
understand. The book puts a face to those feelings and, in presenting them as
something separate from the child, helps kids understand them better.
This would be a great class read-a-loud for students who
have trouble with feelings and self-control.
