The Highway Rat

Product Information

As mom who was an English Lit major, I LOVE this cheeky little book...it's a retelling of/homage to Alfred Noyes' poem "The Highwayman" (without all the, you know, shooting and death and ghosts and whatnot). My son loves the great rhythm, and at two, fills in the words at the end of each stanza. The fact that it's a long poem makes it a fun read-aloud, and it's great to start to expose little ones to poetry concepts at an early age, from a literacy standpoint. Plus, it's just fun. I really enjoy writing verse, even though it can be fiendishly difficult. I used to memorise poems as a child and it means a lot to me when parents tell me their child can recite one of my books. Are children puzzled by anything? For example the meaning of words or phrases such as ‘stand and deliver’ or ‘halt’. I also continued to write “grown-up” songs and perform them in folk clubs and on the radio, and have recently released two CDs of these songs. Help your child to dress up as a highway rat use a piece of cloth as a cloak. You could make a mask for your child out of card. For instructions follow link here and scroll to ‘Method 2’ Play the story

The Highway Rat’ (2016) is another first rate little adventure for younger readers from the accomplished pen of Julia Donaldson, with the usual and lovely accompanying illustrations by Axel Sheffler. The Highway Rat is our new book for our Literacy lessons in Year 1. They have all really engaged with the story and the characters. It has provided us with many different discussion points - one child pointed out to me today that the Highway Rat is naughty not only because he steals people's food, but also because he talks to strangers! This gave us the opportunity to have a little PSHE talk about 'stranger danger', and why the Highway Rat has not been making good choices!I grew up in a tall Victorian London house with my parents, grandmother, aunt, uncle, younger sister Mary and cat Geoffrey (who was really a prince in disguise. Mary and I would argue about which of us would marry him). Choose a scene from the story and act it out together, you can improvise an imaginary conversation or use some of the words from the story. Make a poster Funnily enough, I find it harder to write not in verse, though I feel I am now getting the hang of it! My novel THE GIANTS AND THE JONESES is going to be made into a film by the same team who made the Harry Potter movies, and I have written three books of stories about the anarchic PRINCESS MIRROR-BELLE who appears from the mirror and disrupts the life of an otherwise ordinary eight-year-old. I have just finished writing a novel for teenagers. Look at the use of speech marks within the story. Could you use these to turn the story into a play and perform it to others? As the story develops, the Highway Rat’s horse has to carry more of the things that he has stolen. How much might each of these things weigh? How much would the horse have to carry in total?

The author uses different words to describe how the Highway Rat speaks (e.g. declared, bellowed). Can you think of any more? Absolutely marvelous! As an adult reader I totally adore the clever and delightful textual parody of Alfred Noyes' classic The Highwayman ballad (and indeed also much appreciate that with The Highway Rat, Julia Donaldson has just taken Alfred Noyes' external form and has not made her text content wise into some silly love story and her Highway Rat into a romantic type of hero, as no, that would in my opinion have made The Highway Rat annoyingly maudlin and not the engaging and so very much fun poetic parody of The Highwayman that it is).Although the story line is very simple, there is a lot of cross curricular links there. Our year 2 created a ‘WANTED!’ poster for the Highway Rat and wrote about the crimes of the rat and why they needed to catch him as soon as possible. The children had to use a range of descriptive language to make their writing interesting and for creating a sense of urgency. In addition, our year 2 created their own version of the capture of the Highway Rat with a clear beginning, middle and end. They had to use a lot of similes, adjectives and body language to create tension and a chase to grab their reader’s attention. Before you start reading the book look at the cover illustration and title together. What does your child think will happen in this story? They maybe unsure what a highway is and this may be a good point to talk about highwaymen – or you could do so later after enjoying the story together. Read the story as far as the lines about the animals growing thinner and thinner. How does your child think the animals feel? Is there anything the animals can do? Continue reading to the end of the story. Another delightful instant classic by Donaldson (writer) and Scheffler (illustrator) as a pesky Highway Rat is stealing all the other animals sweets and pastries.

We have spoken about how the book rhymes, and how it can be read in a rhythmical way. The second time that we read it, the children were able to join in with some of the repetitive sentences, which they all really enjoyed.We have also managed to link it to art - we created Wanted posters for the Highway Rat. The children had to use their literacy skills to describe the rat and his terrible crimes, and then got the opportunity to be artistically creative as well. It could also be used for PSHE lessons, to explore why stealing is wrong and how it can affect the victim’s life. In science they can look at food chains and animal habitats and use the story to explore these topics further. Julia Donaldson divides her time between Scotland and West Sussex where she lives with her husband. Axel is from Hamburg, and has lived in the UK since 1984. He lives in London with his family but travels extensively.