There’s a Rang-Tan in my bedroom

Anneta introduced this picturebook to several groups of students [from 6 to 8 and from 10 to 13 years old]. She bravely admitted that she had underestimated its power and so she will be using it again next year and planning a whole project around it.

The last post from PEPELT in April 2022, a month where we share picturebooks with eco-themes to celebrate Earth Day, is from Anneta Sadowska. Anneta’s picturebook is ‘There’s a Rang-Tan in my bedroom’ written by James Sellick and illustrated by Frann Preston-Gannon (Wren & Rook Books, 2019).

When a little girl discovers a mischievous orangutan on the loose in her bedroom, she can’t understand why it keeps shouting OOO! at her shampoo and her chocolate. But when Rang-tan explains that there are humans running wild in her rainforest, burning down trees so they can grow palm oil to put in products, the little girl knows what she has to do: help save the orangutans!

Published in collaboration with Greenpeace and based on their film that became a viral sensation, ‘There’s a Rang-tan in My Bedroom’ includes information about orangutans and palm oil plus exciting ideas about how young readers can make a difference.

As you can see from Anneta’s film her children in Poland didn’t know anything about orangutans or palm oil, but now they do, and they want to help stop the mass destruction of the orangutans’ jungle home by writing letters and telling their families about palm oil.

A couple of films and resources Anneta mentions in her chat:

1. The Green Peace animated film narrated by Emma Thompson
2. A film of children in the UK talking about orangutans and how they want manufacturers to stop using palm oil.
3. A film about Peanut a baby orangutan, who hasn’t learned to climb as he was separated from his mother at too young an age.