The pictures are enough by themselves to tell the story in this book. I read it to my year 3 class (7-8 year olds) and they were entranced for 10 minutes, eyes wide open, not a sound. A simple and yet curious world about a boy who loved stars very much, so much so that he tried various ways to catch a star but was unsuccessful. With my classes, I stop here and ask the children if they can invent ways in which we could catch a star. This leads to wickedly imaginative diagrams with surprisingly technical and intricate detail. Not all; some designs are simple yet creative. I then teach the technical language they need and causal conjunctions so that they can write an interesting explanation text to explain to others how their creation works. We leave the book behind and their ideas then motivate the writing but, each time I teach this, I am always inundated with requests to go back to the book and finish the story, which has a very sweet ending.
I read the book from beginning to end with my youngest daughter when she was three and it prompted lots and lots of questions, which I decided to leave unanswered. This story paints a similar yet different world which everyone can enjoy.
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