CBA2024: The Princess and the (Greedy) Pea

‘The Princess and the (Greedy) Pea’ by Leigh Hodgkinson is one of the four fabulous titles shortlisted for the 2024 Children’s Book Awards Books in the Younger Children Category. It is a wonderfully playful cautionary tale which uses the cumulative format of ‘There was an old woman who swallowed a fly…’ to retell the story of ‘The Princess and the Pea’-with a twist! Beautifully illustrated, it is a complete delight- one of those books which appeals as much to an adult sharing the story as to the children enjoying it!

There are so many ways in which this lovely book could be used as the starting point for further fun! If children aren’t familiar with ‘There was an old woman…’ or the ‘Princess and the Pea’, there is a lovely retelling of the Old Woman illustrated by Pam Adams (Child's Play International Ltd ISBN: 978-0859537278) and there are a number of retellings of ‘The Princess and the Pea’, including one by Rachel Isadora (Puffin ISBN: ‎ 978-0142413937), Lauren Child (Puffin ISBN: 978-0141500140) and Mini Grey (Red Fox ISBN: 978-0099432333) which considers things from the pea’s point of view.

It’s always fun to play a game, however, so we have created ‘Feed the Pea’ which can be adapted to suit players of all ages! All you need is card, coloured paints or pens, scissors and paper. You need to decide on the size which you would like your game to be. This is a table top version, but it can be as big as you like!

First, decide on the size you would like your game to be and cut a piece of card for the back board. This will need to have a hole cut into it later for the pea’s mouth- but don’t do this yet!

Next, draw round something round to create a Pea which will fill the backboard. Cut out this circle and then draw round another circle inside this one to create the mouth. Carefully cut this out, leaving a hole (NB: The pea could be drawn/painted onto the actual backboard). Draw round two white circles, two smaller green circles and finally two little black circles and then stick these together to form the eyes (see below!). Stick these onto the pea, add a nose and then draw round two circles in green for the cheeks.

Now, mount your pea onto the back board and cut out the mouth-hole. The card for this needs to be fairly stiff to make sure Pea stands up. Once mounted, you need to create a stand to support Pea. This can be done in a variety of ways which need to be adapted depending on the size of your pea. One method is shown below.

Scrunch up different coloured pieces of paper to represent the different foods which Pea eats in the book- green for the Brussels sprout, red for the soup, brown for the bread and so on… The object of the game is to get a piece of each food through Pea’s open mouth. Points can be scored for each piece which makes it through. For the smaller game, pieces will need to be flicked whereas larger games can have things thrown or if you chose to use small balls, kicked through the mouth. Children will enjoy creating rules and adapting the game to suit them!

Have fun!

The Princess and the (greedy) Pea

Leigh Hodgkinson

Walker ISBN: 978-1529503005