Hi, Sparky here.
Ø
The
summer is almost at an end. The animal and bird babies who were born during
summer will have lots of food to eat as the rains come. Also, now the babies
are big enough to withstand spells of continuous rains should the sky decide on
pouring on us the whole day long. Most of us, lying lethargic partly due to
heat and partly to conserve our energy have started to come out of our stupor
as we sense the change.
Ø The other day when the Otters
and I were having one our discussions, we got talking about stories. They told
me of how they think the fairy tales of old are gruesome tales of cruelty and
violence, many of them based on real historical events. Most of them were written
to serve as a lesson and warning for the readers but if the readers of today were
to read the original stories, it would just put them off and not serve any lesson.
Over the centuries these tales have been modified to suit the changing
preferences of people in keeping with the changing sensibilities of times.
Nevertheless, they are tales whose moral lessons emerge of ghastly proceedings.
These probably should serve as a mirror to the past, to our history and how we
need to change if we want to change the times we live in. But it’s also true of
some things and some people that the more they change more they tend to remain
the same.
Ø Two days back we had a Pied
Cuckoo who was flying by on his way to his winter home. Pied Cuckoos are called
‘Rain birds’ as their presence signals that the rains aren’t far behind. They
migrate from the south to the north of India during late summer and thus herald
the coming of rains where they go. This cuckoo who stopped at our island shared
some news that has shocked and rendered all of us speechless. A week back an
Elephant who had come into a village of humans ended up eating a pineapple with
explosives in it. As the unsuspecting elephant chewed on the pineapple it
exploded in her mouth which eventually caused her death and also the death of
the unborn baby she was carrying within her. It’s the kind of cruelty straight
out of humans’ fairy tales. In their stories humans have ogres and cruel
wolves, in our reality we have cruel humans. What remains the same is the suffering
and pain.
Ø Yesterday the humans marked
another ‘Environment day’ to ‘celebrate’ nature. On June 5th every year
on ‘World Environment Day’ the humans are supposed to become ‘aware and act to
protect the environment’! Where’s the awareness, where’s the protection? Like I
said, the more some things change, more they remain the same. Especially true
of humans.
Ø In preparation for monsoon, I
usually clean my hollow. As leftover food could breed fungus with the increase
in moisture content in the air with the coming of rains. After the news brought
by the pied cuckoo I now need to cleanse my mind and heart as well but I don’t
know how.
If you could use some puzzles
to take your mind off unpleasant things, here are a few activities for you.
- Solve the below riddles to get the names of few popular fairy tales.
A wicked
family who takes away her fortune,
A fairy
arrives to make it right, at a moment opportune.
Attend and
hasten away from a ball,
A shoe finally
turns out to be her rescue call.
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|
Another wicked
mother, very many in these tales-all wicked, none wise.
Lives on
kindness of strangers, when she’s to be killed, it’s ordered
Again, in the
end by a prince, rescued,
How else is a
girl supposed to survive, otherwise?
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|
A witch for a
change, who locks up her charge in a stair-less spread.
A prince, yet
again, comes to rescue but needs to be rescued instead.
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|
A cunning animal
helps his human, who is undeserving.
Is it right
for cunning and lack of merit to be thus extolling?
|
- Here are some animal derived words used as adjectives. Can you match the words to their meaning:
Adjective
|
Meaning
|
Sluggish
|
Meek
and gentle
|
Lamb-like
|
Extremely
slow
|
Waspish
|
Suspicious
|
Catty
|
Feel
embarrassed
|
Fishy
|
Very
quick to anger
|
Sheepish
|
Intentionally
hurtful
|
- This is a twist on last week’s math puzzle.
The
Otters regularly go to the bookstore to ‘trade’ books. They sell the books they
don’t want anymore and buy books that they want. The books that they sell are
bought by the shopkeeper at 60% of the book’s original price and the books that
they buy are offered to them at a 10% discount. They can also buy ‘used books’,
which are books that have been sold back to the bookstore by readers. These
used books carry a discount of 30% on the original price.
Here’s
the list of books with the original price mentioned against it. Could you
calculate the amount that the Otters had to pay the bookstore owner?
Books sold by
the Otters
|
Books bought
by the Otters
|
||
Pride
& Prejudice – Jane Austen
|
10
|
North
& South – Elizabeth Gaskell
|
15
|
The
Mayor of Casterbridge –Thomas Hardy
|
15
|
Anne
of Green Gables - Lucy Maud Montgomery (Used book)
|
12
|
The
Mill on the Floss - George Elliot
|
12
|
One
hundred years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
|
20
|
Kings
Solomon’s Mines - H. Rider Haggard
|
8
|
Siddhartha
- Hermann Hesse
|
15
|
- Homophones are words
that sound same but have different meanings. Can you choose the right words for
these sentences?
v The
Otters ________ (advised/adviced) us to take the stories of fairy tales with a
pinch of salt.
v The
Otters’ _______ (advise/advice) was well received by the residents of Banyan
Island.
v Gumphu
and the Otters _______ (complement/compliment) each other as they have similar interests.
v Since
the time Gumphu’s taken charge of the baby monkeys’ education, she’s been receiving
many a _______ (complement/compliment).
v The
Koel’s loud and repeated calls ________ (affected/effected) our sleep.
v The
_______ (affect/effect) of Koel’s loud and repeated calls could be seen in our
unrested eyes.
v Squirrels
cannot swim as they cannot hold their _______ (breath/breathe) under water.
v Squirrels
inability to _______ (breath/breathe) under water means they cannot enjoy a refreshing
swim.
- Here’s a little something for my ‘little’ readers:
See you all next week with
more news, activities and answers to this week’s puzzles.
Answers to last week’s puzzles:
- Solve the below riddles to get the names of some great writers.
Charles Dickens
|
From a tale of
two cities to expectations that are great,
From Scrooge
in a Christmas Carol to orphan boy
Twist,
This author’s
books are read and enjoyed till date.
|
P.G. Wodehouse
|
Jeeves,
Bertie, Psmith with a P and characters numerous,
For something
light and something humorous,
Pick up this
and your choice won’t be erroneous.
|
Agatha Christie
|
If it’s
mystery you are craving for,
Buy one with
Poirot or a Maple from the bookstore.
|
Mark Twain
|
Characters for
all times - Tom Sawyer and Huck
Finn,
You will know
no boredom, If you start reading him.
|
J.K. Rowling
|
Mesmerized
millions with a theme almost illogical,
A boy born
with magic and a series that’s just magical.
|
- Use ‘Sequence words’ to fill in the blanks in the story. This is not the only right way of doing it, if the sentence sounds grammatically correct, any other sequence words could be used instead of the ones I have used.
First thing early in the morning,
Gumphu monkey likes to go to the river for a swim. Be it summer or winter,
Gumphu keeps to her morning routine. Next, she heads back home for a
light breakfast of fruits and nuts. Later,
when she’s had her breakfast, she
settles down for reading a book for a good half an hour before she joins her
family wherever they are on the island. After their lunch, the monkeys
head back to the Banyan for their afternoon nap. The monkeys yet again head out
for another snack before returning to the Banyan for the day. Subsequently,
as the day begins to fade the mothers groom their babies first, and then
when they groom each other, the babies gather around Gumphu who tells them
stories with lessons hidden in them, like why one needs to be within sight of
their family at all times, why one should not chew more than one can bite and
so on. She also tells them poems on which food is available in which season,
where those trees are located on the island, how earthworms are important to
keep trees healthy and such useful survival lessons. Then, as the baby
monkeys go back to their mothers, Gumphu settles down to read a book before
she falls asleep.
- What comes next in the sequence:
Blue
|
Green
|
Yellow
|
Orange
|
Triangle
|
Square
|
Rhombus
|
Pentagon
|
Mercury
|
Venus
|
Earth
|
Mars
|
Seed
|
Sprout
|
Sapling
|
Plant
|
Egg
|
Caterpillar
|
Pupa
|
Butterfly
|
Stone
|
Secrets
|
Azkaban
|
Fire
|
Twilight
|
New
Moon
|
Eclipse
|
Breaking Dawn
|
- Match the books with the characters:
Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn
|
Tom
Sawyer
|
Harry
Potter
|
Dolores
Umbridge
|
The
Jungle Book
|
Bagira
|
The
Hobbit
|
Gandalf
|
Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland
|
The
White Rabbit
|
The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
|
Dr.
Watson
|
The
Jeeves stories by P.G. Wodehouse
|
Bertie
Wooster
|
Little
Women
|
Laurie
|
- The Otters’ math puzzle for the baby monkeys:
The
Otters regularly go to the bookstore to ‘trade’ books. They sell the books they
don’t want anymore and buy books that they want. The books that they sell are
bought by the shopkeeper at 60% of the book’s original selling price and the
books that they buy are offered to them at a 10% discount. They can also buy
‘used books’, which are books that have been sold back to the bookstore by
readers. These used books carry a discount of 40% on the original price. Here’s the list of books with its actual
price that they bought and sold on their last visit to the bookstore. Could you
calculate the amount that the Otters had to pay the bookstore owner?
Books Sold by
the Otters
|
Books bought
by the Otters
|
||
Pride
& Prejudice – Jane Austen
|
10
|
North
& South – Elizabeth Gaskell
|
15
|
The
Mayor of Casterbridge –Thomas Hardy
|
15
|
Anne
of Green Gables - Lucy Maud Montgomery (Used book)
|
12
|
The
Mill on the Floss - George Elliot
|
12
|
One
hundred years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
|
20
|
Kings
Solomon’s Mines - H. Rider Haggard
|
8
|
Siddhartha
- Hermann Hesse
|
15
|
Answer: This was a trick question.
The answer lay in language rather than numbers. The price of books on the list is the
‘actual’ price at which the books were bought and sold, which means these are
the prices after the discounts have been applied.
Books
purchased by the Otters (15+12+20+15)
|
a
|
62
|
Books
sold by the Otters (10+15+12+8)
|
b
|
45
|
Amount
to be paid by Otters to bookstore owner
|
a-b
|
17
|
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