As part of Young City Reads we were reading Malamander by Thomas Taylor.
Listen to the next chapters below. You can read ‘The Museum of Eerie’ chapter if you prefer.
THE MUSEUM OF EERIE
Recording – The Museum of Eerie
You can read it here
MR MOLLUSC –Mr Mollusc
A KRAKEN’S-EYE VIEW –A Kraken’s-eye view
MYSTERIOUS VISITORS –
You can read the email from the Young City Reads team here.
YCR 2020 – Mrs Fossil’s Flotsamporium
If you complete the reading you can try this activity –
Re-read the description of Mrs Fossil’s Flotsamporium (p97-99), focusing on the vocabulary used to describe the flotsam:
The bottles and jars in the window – backlit now by the morning sun – burn and sparkle with translucent pebbles of every imaginable colour. Violet looks down and sees her own body dappled with rainbow light.
“Sea glass!” says Mrs F, also noticing Violet’s wondering expression. “Mermaid’s tears! Broken bottle bits, thrown away as rubbish, rolled by the sea for countless tides, turned to jewels by the power of nature.”
Use the collection of flotsam to create some magical metaphors and similes. Can you pick your favourite piece of flotsam and come up with a range of ways to describe it using figurative language?
For example:
The sea glass shard is
A furious flame from the mouth of a deep-sea dragon
A jagged jewel from the crown of a forgotten sea god
A silent secret from a pirate’s hidden hoard
Explore the effect of powerful verbs and adjectives, as well as alliteration.
Voila! (That’s French for ‘there you go!’) You’ve created a poem!
You could send your poem in and we could put them on the website blog page.