You can also use this as a learning opportunity to talk about what children should do if ever they were lost and whom to approach for help. Once children are familiar with the text, this is a great book to have out for children to enjoy independently. Look at the plants and flowers in the illustrations. Can you identify similar plants using reference books?

In this book, a baby monkey is looking for his mother. A friendly butterfly takes charge and tries to solve the puzzle of where she might be.

Also look out for jigsaw puzzles featuring some of the animals from the story, such as the elephant or butterfly. Puzzles can develop children’s problem-solving skills, as well as their understanding of shape and size.

Look at the different types of punctuation shown in the story. Could you use some of these in your own writing? Once more this misleads butterfly as she produces a snake, so Little Monkey has to tell him that his mum has more legs than that. Once more this is confusing to butterfly who produces a spider. 'No, no, no! ... 'she'd rather eat fruit than swallow a fly, And she lives in the treetops way up high' is Little Monkey's next clue. I also continued to write “grown-up” songs and perform them in folk clubs and on the radio, and have recently released two CDs of these songs. Unfortunately, the baby monkey doesn’t give a full description of his mother and so butterfly takes the baby monkey to the wrong animal over and over again. When the baby monkey finally explains that he looks like his mother, the puzzle is nearly solved. Look at the patterns and textures on the animals in the story. Investigate what camouflage means and how this helps animals.

Talk about

Monkey Puzzleis a very cleverly written story which is full of humour but also introduces children to a wide range of animals as well as the concept of caterpillars changing into butterflies. The little monkey gets more and more frustrated as the story unfolds and little ones love joining in with the repetition, “No, no, no! That’s a …”. Axel Scheffler’s trademark illustrations add to the humour and we love the expressions on the animals’ faces. Before Malcolm and I had our three sons we used to go busking together and I would write special songs for each country; the best one was in Italian about pasta. Monkey Puzzle or Where’s My Mom by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler is full of delights for young children. You will find Julia Donaldson’s brilliant rhymes and Axel Scheffler’s wonderful illustrations along with repetition, clues, jungle animals and a great big hug. We have read it over and over again and never tire of it. If you don’t own a copy it is a great addition to your bookshelves at this time of year as Mother’s Day approaches and it is also a fantastic story to read in the Spring as an introduction to the lifecycle of a butterfly.

The baby monkey assumed that the butterfly would know babies look like their mothers. With older children, you could look at how easy it is to think that everyone thinks the same as us – for example, ‘because I like apples, you must like apples’. The story is wonderful to read and enjoy simply as it is, or if you want to use the book to inspire some conversation I have always found Burt is quite happy to talk about the friendly characters that Axel Scheffler brings to life in the illustrations. You could use the story to talk about different animals, introduce some mathematics by counting each animals’ legs or do some biology and talk about metamorphosis and the lifecycle of a butterfly. You could also explore language together by describing each other or thinking of a better description for little monkey’s mum.

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I really enjoy writing verse, even though it can be fiendishly difficult. I used to memorise poems as a child and it means a lot to me when parents tell me their child can recite one of my books.