Resources to enrich The Hidden Village

 

Soon, I will be sharing with you a review of this new book from Bonnie Rose Hudson. She is an amazing writer whose works show us new worlds and lead us to experience people and places we didn’t know about before. The Hidden Village is just such a book. In fact, it is about that very thing. I have pulled these videos together to share with the giggly girls in order to enrich our own reading of the book and to help us understand more about the place and culture of the story and its characters.

The book is set in India, in the part that is known as the state of West Bengal. The village is situated at the southern end of this section, near the Bay of Bengal.

 

MANGROVES

Just a few videos to pick and choose from about mangroves. The place where the story takes places is a mangrove forest and that is very different than any forest my girls have ever seen. So I found a few and we probably will not watch all of them all the way through. But, I did like certain things about each one so I chose a variety.

 

 

 

JUTE

In the book, the family cultivates and harvests jute. So, what better way to understand the work that goes into the harvest of this product than a couple of videos.

 

MARKET

The character talks about visiting the market and what they are able to get from the markets. I imagine this one is still very different from what they experienced in the book but it still gives a bit of an idea to the girls.

 

VILLAGE

I found this interesting. It would be more like the village the main character lives in and not the village that was hidden. Still, some pictures are helpful in understanding more about them, even if it is not as primitive as the book setting.

 

SARI

A sari is a style of dress that is worn long and over one shoulder. These are often colorful and vibrant. The best way to see a sari is to do a search online. Many of what I found were very fancy, not at all what I would imagine the girls and women of The Hidden Village would wear.

INDIAN RHINOCEROS

You can read up on this magnificent animal and see some images pretty easily online. Here is a nice information page about it that gives very readable information on the rhinoceros, an endangered animal. This herbivore can grow very large and is a solitary animal.

MONGOOSE

This little mammal is very small, only about 6 or so inches. It eats both plants and animals, making it an omnivore. They appear much like a weasel but are very agile like a monkey. There are a few images on A-Z Animals and there are plenty of others online.

 

And that is the end of the list. There are probably more that I could pull together and I might. But for not, these are the ones that are specifically mentioned at the end of the book in the section on exploring the world of West Bengal, India.

Tagged: books, Elementary