The Bear Under The Stairs

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e. the name of the various food and fruits that William feeds the bear) is easy to teach with the use of this text. This story is something a lot of young children will feel familiar with – they have big imaginations about the unknown which can be quite enchanting, just like this book. Most recently she has written and illustrated The Hippo at the end of the Hall; a children’s novel published by David Fickling Books. The bear under the stairs is centred around a boy named William whom having one day seen a furry figure inside the cellar believes that there is a bear living under his stairs. For a whole class it would be really nice as a “read out loud’ story but you would need a big book or visualiser to show the illustration.

Helen Cooper is an author and illustrator whose work includes classic picture books such as The Bear Under the Stairs , Pumpkin Soup , The Baby Who Wouldn’t Go to Bed and Tatty Ratty . She has also written and illustrated children’s MG fiction and the latest – The Taming of the Cat – published in October 2023. Poor William thinks he saw a bear under the stairs, and he figures he can keep it happy by feeding it regularly.Helen Cooper is an author and illustrator whose work includes classic titles such as The Bear Under the Stairs, Pumpkin Soup, The Baby Who Wouldn’t Go to Bed and Tatty Ratty. Helen Cooper is a significant and prolific author who won the Kate Greenaway award twice for two consecutive books. Since then she has written and illustrated a whole lot more including the bestselling 'Pumpkin Soup' ,which is 25 years old this year, and also the others in the series which are 'A Pipkin of Pepper', and 'Delicious'. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

It would make a lovely book to be read at storytime as there is opportunity for lots of conversation and discussion about the ending of the book. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Children will particularly like the imaginative bear scenes such as what the bear does at night while William sleeps and the bear holding his luggage while parachuting down to a new house at the end. I loved the ending, where Williams Mumma comforts him and with her by his side, he gains the courage to tackle the bear under the stair. Find out what happens when a nasty smell pervades the house and Mum and William decide to investigate .This is what the story builds up for the audience to believe but then we are contradicted once again and the existence of the bear is confirmed. For KS1 there are lots of great examples of alliteration “bacon, bananas, bread”; “hazelnuts, haddock and honey” – children could add to the list or choose different letters and list alliterative food items that could be fed to the bear! The sequence of learning finishes with children making comparisons between real bears and toy bears and using this as the basis for an information report about bears to give to William to help him feel less scared.

I think it would be a great class read maybe as part of a PSHCE section or if it came up as a worry for children. Although the book is full of beautiful (sometimes scary) illustrations and visual descriptions, I thought it was a very difficult story for young children to make sense of. This is a classic tale of one little boy and his attempts to deal with his fear about the bear that lives under the stairs. This is an interesting story for children mainly due to many interpretations that children will have regarding the story.Cooper was able to capture the ideas that children often have about whats in the closet, under the bed or in this case under the stairs. This book would be suitable for children slightly older in Key Stage 1 (aged 5-7 years) as they are more likely to have that understanding in place picking up that the story is about the boy’s imagination.