From Adam Baron, the author of bestselling and Carnegie-nominated debut Boy Underwater, comes another moving, hilarious novel of friendship and family secrets, which shows that people are people – no matter where they’re from.
Here’s something you won’t believe: someone is doing terrible things to Mrs Martin, Cymbeline Igloo’s favourite teacher of all time.
Cymbeline has to find the culprit (after he’s learned what ‘culprit’ means). He’s also got to help his friend Veronique, whose grandma, Nanai, is dangerously ill.
It seems Nanai has a secret, connected to her arrival in the UK as a Boat Person from Vietnam, a traumatic journey in which she lost her twin sister.
Can Cymbeline figure out the mystery in time? One thing is for sure: even the most unexpected people can change your life in wonderful ways…
Using these resources
Inference, interpretation and description This resource pack provides an extract from the story where Cymbeline has come to visit his friend Veronique and meets Nanai for the first time.
The teaching sequence and supporting resource sheets will give children the opportunity to:
- Practise reading and responding to texts
- Develop their inference skills, reflecting on what they can learn about a character from reading a rich text
- Discuss their own interpretations of a text, using evidence to justify their opinions
- Create their own character descriptions, using a range of techniques to bring a character to life
Depending on time, and the needs of your class, you may want to work through all of these interrelated activities or focus on just one in detail.
The resource can be used with the whole class, with a smaller group or even given to individuals to read and then use independently.
