Author and illustrator Shoo Rayner has created a fantastic activity pack to accompany his book, Walker: The boy who can talk to dogs.
In this activity pack you will find background material, a how-to-draw guide, a comprehension crossword and quiz, word search, colouring sheets and more. Click on the image to download.
You can also find lots of dog and Walker videos at www.shoorayner.com/walker
Artist Guy Manning has created these sea-themed colouring sheets to accompany Elen’s Island by Eloise Williams. Click on the images to download.
We’d love to see your finished artwork. If you’re sharing on Twitter or Instagram, you can tag us @FireflyPress so we can see and share. Have fun getting creative!
Children’s author and academic Dr Vanessa Harbour has created cross-curricular lesson plans to accompany her WWII novel Flight. Click on the lesson subjects below to download the files.
This resource was created by The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE). CLPE is a charity working to improve literacy in primary schools. Find out more about their training courses, free resources and high-quality teaching sequences at: www.clpe.org.uk
Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot by Horatio Clare, illustrated by Jane Matthews, won the Branford Boase Award in 2016. The purpose of this lesson outline is to support teachers in reading aloud a selected text that and to talk about the text with their children, allowing children to respond to and understand the text in greater depth.
‘From the moment of his birth Aubrey is destined to be different — a ‘rambunctious wolf’ whose early years are marked by scrapes and incidents, the idyllic life he shares with his loving parents belies the difficulties in store, as his father succumbs to depression, and Aubrey must bring his imagination to bear to find a solution to the monster that threatens his father and his family. The story is told with humour and sensitivity, without shying aware from the darker side of parental depression.’ CLPE
Click on the image to download the resource.
This was a lovely project to be involved with. Here my novella, THE DARKNESS, is part of a collection of three darker-themed YA novellas, together with authors Kat Ellis and Rhian Ivory. It’s quite long for a novella at about 32,000 words. I even toyed with the idea of making it a whole novel by itself.
Here’s how publisher Firefly Press summarises Three Strikes:
The Darkness by Lucy Christopher: Kasha has answered the advert for The Tribe. Now she sits writing alone in the darkness of the jungle. Is she the only one left? Then she spots a red light blinking at her from the darkness. Cat’s eyes? A camera?
The Twins of Blackfin by Kat Ellis: Every evening Bo visits her best friend Sky’s grave. One night she hears a girl’s voice. Following it leads her to a journal and a crypt.
Matchgirl by Rhian Ivory: A modern YA retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl. Busking, runaway Nia is mugged and left badly hurt in a tunnel. All she has is three matches, and she starts seeing pictures in the light… A story of grief, love and music.
I really love my story in this collection. In some ways, I think it’s the best story I’ve written! I wrote this version of it very fast, over the course of one hot summer month. But that doesn’t mean this story was easy to write! I actually started it almost a decade before while on a trip to Cross River National Park in Nigeria. I wanted to write about a reality show going wrong; I wanted to talk about the dynamics of troubled teenagers dealing with this. I also wanted to explore another story: a teenage girl’s grief, confusion and guilt over the death of her mother. I wanted to do all this with the backdrop of the most amazing natural environment – the rainforest of Nigeria. I think I sat on this story for so long because I didn’t know how to tell it; I also didn’t feel like I knew this environment well enough for the story I originally wanted to write. When I found the trip journal device, together with Kasha’s voice, the story suddenly was released in a torrent of words and emotions.
Find out more about Lucy on her website: www.lucychristopher.com
“The Darkness’ by Lucy Christopher is such a beautiful story – mysterious, exciting, deeply emotional and with a rare spiritual depth. It stays in the mind like a prayer.” Melvin Burgess
“A raw tale, reminiscent of Black Mirror, with compelling characters stranded in a stark landscape, all bound together in gritty, gripping writing.” Joanna Nadin
“YA as it should be – dangerous, dark and daring. I loved it.” CJ Skuse
