This is a fun story about a rabbit who likes to make up rhymes about everything and anything! Unfortunately for him, his other rabbit friends find his incessant need to make up rhymes about everything incredibly irritating and keep telling him to stop doing it. As you read these books with your child (or have them read them to you), be sure to take note of and discuss the rhyming words in the book and how they are useful in decoding unknown words.

Did you know that the ability to rhyme can be an early predictor of whether or not a child can read? Whether or not they can rhyme. In fact a study from the Center for Early Literacy Learning showed that there was a strong correlation particularly with nursery rhyme experience and stronger phonological skills early on. His books contain casts of colorful characters and tongue twisting tales of fun and imagination. His silly antics have been bringing giggles to home for decades. To introduce this strategy, I begin with the book, The Rhyming Rabbit. This is a story about a lonely rabbit with an affinity for creating poems. None of the other animals in the forest appreciate his rhymes, until one night he meets a friendly sheep who loves to rhyme too.

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My real breakthrough was THE GRUFFALO, again illustrated by Axel. We work separately - he’s in London and I’m in Glasgow - but he sends me letters with lovely funny pictures on the envelopes. Rhyme Battles For this you’ll need to set a timer for say, 15 seconds. Give your child a word and have them tell you as many words as they can think of that rhyme with that word. You will record them on a whiteboard. Then you will trade of and you will choose a diferent word and do the same. The winner is the person who thought up the most rhymes. However, his books aren’t just fun to read. They are also extremely important as a beginning reading resource as they contain something incredibly helpful for young readers. Rhyming Rabbit is a reading strategy that teaches young readers to think about words that end similar to another word and potential rhymes to help them decode the word. His books are in fact, partially the inspiration behind this next reading strategy that does not typically appear on classroom walls.

Before Malcolm and I had our three sons we used to go busking together and I would write special songs for each country; the best one was in Italian about pasta. 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. This is another strategy I created for my students when I saw a need for it. I noticed students doing really well using beginning sounds as clues and even looking for chunks.I really liked this book due to the clever rhyming and captivating illustrations which make engagement with the book easy for young children.