Class Information
Teacher – Mr J. Cherkowski
TA – Mrs M. Waite
Lightning Mary – Anthea Simmons
Room 13 – Robert Swindells
Beowulf – Michael Morpurgo
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Bolt Thief – Rick Riordan
Chapter Book: I Am Lenny Brown by Dan Freedman
Lenny Brown is a beautiful, emotionally uplifting and powerful story. It focuses on Lenny
who, due to his mum changing jobs, has to move house and school. In the story, Lenny not
only navigates the rollercoaster of change that comes with a new school and new friendships
but tackles this as a child who only will speak to his mum and his dog, Rocky.
Fiction and Fantasy: The House with Chicken Legs by Melissa Castrillon
Marinka is a 12-year-old girl who lives with her grandmother, Baba Yaga. Together, they live
in a house with chicken legs and move around from place to place, fulfilling their role of
‘guardians of the gate’ by guiding the spirits of the deceased through the gateway between
life and death. Marinka’s destiny appears to be already decided; she is to train to become a
Yaga like her grandmother and this means that she is never allowed to go to school or make
friends with the living. What follows is an emotive coming-of-age story that sees Marinka
working to resolve the tensions between her desires and the path she is expected to follow.
Adventure: The Last Bear by Hannah Gold
When April heads to a remote Arctic island with her father, who is there for scientific
research, she’s not sure what to expect. The trip to ‘Bear Island’ has the potential to be a very
lonely trip – with endless summer Arctic nights, an isolated wilderness and, according to her
father, no actual polar bears left on the island for April to spot despite its name. Surprisingly,
April encounters a real polar bear on the island when nobody else is around. Isolated from his
family, the bear is starving and alone, with nobody to help him. Over time, a friendship
develops and April becomes more determined than ever to save the bear.
