The Wonky Donkey Children’s Book Phenomenon
The Wonky Donkey has the world giggling this week
The Wonky Donkey written by Craig Smith and illustrated by Katz Cowley
Cumulative, Rhyming Picture Book published by Scholastic
In late August 2018, The Scottish Granny posted a Youtube video that has caught the world by storm. In the video, she is reading The Wonky Donkey aloud. Her wonderful Scottish accent and her infectious laugh are simply irresistible. We can’t imagine anyone watching the video without giggling. Sales of the book have shot up and a quick check of our local library shows that the book is “on order.”
The Wonky Donkey began as a song, performed by Craig Smith. It was the 2008 APRA AMCOS Children’s Song award winner.
In 2009 The Wonky Donkey was published as a book and it was the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults Children’s Choice award winner and Children’s Choice Picture Book category winner in 2010.
Smith’s wonderful rhyming, repetitive and cumulative text is just so silly and fun!
He only had three legs, one eye and he liked to listen to country music and he was quite tall and slim and he smelt really bad and that morning he got up early and he hadn’t had any coffee
He was a cranky stinky dinky lanky honky tonky winky wonky donkey
Cranky stinky dinky lanky honky tonky winky wonky donkey
This is a simply fantastic book to share with children. The vocabulary is rich (lanky). The alliteration (winky wonky) and rhyming (stinky dinky) will support the development of phonemic awareness.
In the case of The Scottish Granny’s video, although her grandson doesn’t understand the humor of
