Book guide: Zozo & the dog
Do you also like dogs?
Zozo is curious and likes to investigate. It's both a bit scary and fun with a dog.
Questions about playing by yourself, curiosity and feelings
Zozo likes to play by himself. Do you enjoy playing by yourself? What do you usually do when you play by yourself?
Zozo is curious, when are you most curious and what do you usually do then?
Zozo gets scared when the hand doesn't come off the bench. Have you ever been scared? What happened then? How did it feel?
Exercise! Stand in a ring. Let one child at a time show an emotion, for example anger, confusion, joy. Everyone else imitates the child. Talk about if it is possible to hide the real feeling behind a pretended feeling? how does it feel when you don't really dare to show your feelings?
Questions about fruits and hugging trees
Zozo tastes and smells like apples. What fruits do you like? What do they taste and smell like?
Do you usually go to the park or the forest? What do you like to do there?
Exercise! Zozo hugs a tree and looks at the fine bark. See if you can find some trees to hug! Talk about how it feels to hug trees.
The heteronorm
We live in a society where the heteronorm is strong. This causes most people to believe that all other people are heterosexual. This means that many families and even love relationships are made invisible. In the Zozo books it is first the father's boyfriend who is involved and later in the books it becomes Zozo's father so that Zozo has two fathers. In order to make all different families visible, it is important that we reflect them in the literature. Some preschools think that they only have children who live in a heterosexual family with a mother and a father and that they therefore do not need to talk about different types of families. But if the preschool has a segregated catchment area with only heterosexual families, it is extra important to reflect the diversity that actually exists.
