Two or three times in every 100 years heavy rain storms across Queensland cause floods and the water starts to move south through the creeks and rivers. When the waters reach the South Australian border they split into channels across the plains and roll on into Cooper Creek and the Diamantina River. After months they finally reach the salt basin of Lake Eyre and turn it into a huge inland sea and with the coming of the waters so comes all sorts of life including enormous flocks of pelicans.

Review of the book.

Challenge 1. In the first few pages of the book the author describes a lot of changes that take place when Lake Eyre floods and the illustrator gives many clues about the animal and plant life that shows up in these conditions. Make a list of the changes to the environment, both good and bad.
Email your observations to the Pannikin and Pinta Mail List pannikin@teacher.schools.net.au

Challenge 2. Find a map of South Australia and follow the pelicans' journey as you read the story. Find where the Coorong is and mark that on your map too.

Challenge 3. Pannikin and Pinta is the only illustrated book in the Younger Reader's category for Children's Book of the year. Why do you think it was included in this category rather than in the Picture Book category?
Post your ideas to the Pannikin and Pinta Mail List pannikin@teacher.schools.net.au

Challenge 4. Human beings can cause a lot of damage when they visit unusual places. In the story one of the pelicans dies because of someone's carelessness. Make a poster to tell tourists what they should and should not do when they visit Lake Eyre.
Make your poster into a web page. Your team's web page must have your team name with a .html extension as its name. there must be no spaces or capital letters in the name. For example, if your team name was "the Green Dragons", your webpage must be saved as: thegreendragons.html.

Email your team's page as an attachment, along with any graphics you've used, to

Pannikin and Pinta Maintainer andrea@teacher.schools.net.au

Please allow 24 hours for your page to be posted to the Two Hands Student web site. To view the webpages submitted by teams, please click here

Pannikin Student Web Pages

Challenge 5. In many ways this is a sad story but it has some clear messages for example, Mr.Todd tells Sam when Pannikin dies that it was 'a victory in defeat'. What do you think he meant by that? Discuss some of the other messages in the story and post your ideas to the Pannikin and Pinta Mail List pannikin@teacher.schools.net.au