Superhero Strawberry
An unlikely candidate for a superhero but this seemingly innocuous plant thwarts various nefarious plots, in particular one to take over the drones used by the armed forces. A story aimed at 10 to 13 year olds.
“It looked like they’d just executed the perfect crime. Being light but agile, the three gymnasts-cum-felons had been able to actually swing along the tops of the frames of the paintings in the gallery. They swung from painting to painting, like apes swinging from tree to tree, without setting off the alarms fixed behind each painting that went off if anyone tried to pull them off the wall. They then formed a triangle around the small sculpture that was the target of their robbery, each of them hanging gracefully from the frame of three different paintings…”
Books
Crazy Ideas (to stimulate creative writing)
Published by Claire Publications in 2006 and illustrated by John Welding, this book contains seven chapters packed with short, snappy ideas to inspire creative writing. It’s intended to appeal to reluctant writers, using themes such as “Silly Superheroes” and “Excuses for not doing homework”.
Crazy Ideas was included in the “2006 Guide to Literacy Resources” joint-published by the National Literacy Association and the NUT. I am currently working on an extended sequel to Crazy Ideas, which provides “an idea a week” for creative writing entitled Reluctant Writers Resource.
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Every Phoneme Covered
This resource published by Hopscotch Educational Publishing incorporates a simple guide to the teaching of phonics accompanied by three texts of varying length that focus on a particular phoneme, from a sentence to a story in length, for each of the 43 phonemes. It can therefore provide an inexpensive support to any scheme used by a school making the teaching of phonics more stimulating, enjoyable and realistic.
