It Was a Cold Dark Night: Band 03/Yellow (Collins Big Cat)

Lovely book and story, quite short and simple . My Grandaughter loved the story .

A large book is useful for reading to a whole class. The story itself is very simple, but suitable for first year second language primary pupils. It is easy to understand, and with little vocabulary to learn. There are pictures of the moon, trees, stars, ground, and leaves for the pupils to point out as well as the animals . I found a stencil of a hedgehog to print - I cannot draw to save my life ! - and the pupils stuck in silk leaves around the picture onto A4 as a follow up. The age group and difficulty level would not be appropriate for pupils whose first language is German.

'It Was a Cold Dark Night', by Tim Hopgood for the ‘Collins Big Cat’ colour-coded reading programme.In keeping with the reading scheme at this level, the book includes ‘Ideas for Reading’, with suggestions for extension work such as exploring ‘feelings’ and introducing the concept of hibernation for more able readers who could also perhaps retell the story in their own words, accompanied by some artwork.👀 'LOOK INSIDE' above gives an idea of the content.From the back cover:🦔 ~'Ned the hedgehog is looking for a home in the cold, dark forest.He needs somewhere warm and cosy to sleep, but all he keeps finding are other creatures' homes:...rabbits', foxes', owls', bats'Will he ever find a snug safe bed of his own?'ooOooMeasuring around 26.5 x 19 cm, the colourful autumnal cover opens to 16 good quality pages overall, with the story spanning 12. The delightful illustrations are wintry dark, with a short sentence on each page and a repeat element for familiarity & to help promote confidence.Pages 14 & 15 show a map of the forest and the animals Ned comes across on his travels, before he finds his own special type of bed.

A slim book, just twelve pages long, with one short sentence per page. Ned the Hedgehog is looking for a place to hibernate, and encounters rabbits, a fox, owls and bats before discovering a perfect pile of leaves. The illustrations are suitably dark and mysterious (but not scary) and the language is delightfully repetitive, so even very young children can join in and early readers can follow the story for themselves. This makes the book suitable, I would suggest, for children from about 2 years old. The book includes a 'map' of the forest, so that children can re-trace Ned's steps and reproduce the story. There are also some excellent guidelines for using this book as a wider resource, especially in a classroom setting. Well worth adding to any children's library.

My 2 year old thoroughly enjoyed this story :-) great price too

I am a childminder & I purchased this book for an autumn topic to share with the 2-4yr old children I care for. The story is a very simple & short story with what I think has good illustrations along with it. The quality of the cover & pages are not of adequate quality to go on our book display for children to look at daily. The book arrived in a cardboard envelope but the book was curled round when removed from the envelope. Shame, as I like children to handle & enjoy books independently as well as sharing them with me. Sadly the flimsy quality of the cover & pages lets the book down for me.

We have another book by the same author which my son loves called WOW said the Owl and although this book is quite short and dark he loves the animals and it gives you the opportunity to dramatise the animal sounds.

Bought this for my 3 year old Niece along with two other of Tim Hopgoods books. They are beautifully illustrated and written.