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Pinky Goes To School

by Bridget Jardine

21 pages; Saddle stitched; illustrated children's book; full color; catalogue #06-2445; ISBN 1-4251-0687-0; US$10.96, C$10.96, EUR7.49, £5.66

Find out what happens when a day of Show and Tell in school unexpectedly turns into chaos for Pinky the guinea-pig. It ends however, with an equally unexpected surprise...

About the Book

Pinky goes to School describes what happens the day that Jeremy's class teacher, Miss Jones, decides to have a Show and Tell Day with pets. Children without pets have been invited to bring in creatures from their gardens and those who prefer are able to use the classroom pet guinea-pig, Candy, as their pet for the day. Once at school, everything goes reasonably well for the children with all their pets, until the lunchtime recess. Under the watchful eye of Miss Jones, Jeremy opens Pinky's cage to let him have a run around the room. Other pets are out of their cages too. Having met a very timid budgie, Pinky decides to help him enjoy himself by inviting him to ride around the room on his back. Pinky, who tends to be accident prone, races around with other animals following suit. It isn't long before all the carefully laid out papers and pots of paints made ready for the afternoon art lesson, start to tumble and spill over the floor. Before Miss Jones can do anything to stop the chaos, animals of all shapes and sizes are running through the paint- drenched floor and over the scattered sheets of paper.

Once things calm down and the animals are cleaned up and returned to their respective cages, Miss Jones begins to gather up the papers from the floor and to her dismay realizes that the animals have created art work of their own by means of multicoloured paw prints. The children are delighted to see what their pets have done and at the end of the day are able to take home the various little masterpieces!

About the Author

Bridget Jardine lives in Bermuda, but was born in Kent, England and trained as a teacher at Christ Church College, Canterbury.

Teaching had always been her first choice as a career, and once qualified she had little doubt that she had made the right decision.

She has always enjoyed music and found that the guitar and piano proved to be extremely advantageous tools when teaching primary and junior school children.

Prior to teacher training, Bridget had been a member of a choir which competed in many international and local competitions and once at college she sang at the campus Folk Club.

Whilst choosing to major in Art, her preferred medium was oil paint and her focus was predominantly landscapes. Therefore, she willingly acknowledges that it was quite challenging once she embarked upon creating water colour illustrations for her Pinky stories which include a variety of animals and people.

Bridget Jardine's career has spanned 27 years, during which time she took breaks to be at home with her two children while they were young and later kept her hours flexible by substituting in some local schools, but returned to full time teaching once they were older.

She frequently visits the UK throughout the year, and she and her husband spend time in Scotland which they enjoy and where they own a small property.

Animals have always featured prominently in Bridget Jardine's life and she finds it difficult to imagine a home devoid of pets. It was, in fact, one of these pets, a guinea-pig named Pinky which, together with a fictitious young boy, featured as the main characters in a college assignment, Pinky's new Friend, which later evolved into a series of short stories and she recommends that this is first in the series to be read., after which the stories can be chosen at random.

Excerpts