The Highway Rat

Product Information

Find out about the highwaymen of the past. What did they do? Do you know the names of any famous highwaymen? a b "Julia Donaldson". Desert Island Discs. 15 November 2009. BBC Radio 4 . Retrieved 18 January 2014. Walsh, John (3 October 2015). "Julia Donaldson interview: The Gruffalo author on how Judi Dench and busking helped her career". The Independent . Retrieved 12 April 2020. a b Franklin-Wallis, Oliver (17 December 2020). "How Julia Donaldson conquered the world". The Guardian . Retrieved 28 December 2020. The Highway Rat’s manners were ‘rough and rude’. Can you make a list of good manners to help the Highway Rat be nicer to others?

Imagine that one of the animals in the story is being interviewed by the police. What would they tell the police about their encounter with the Highway Rat? Although the story line is very simple, there is a lot of cross curricular links there. Our year 2 created a ‘WANTED!’ poster for the Highway Rat and wrote about the crimes of the rat and why they needed to catch him as soon as possible. The children had to use a range of descriptive language to make their writing interesting and for creating a sense of urgency. In addition, our year 2 created their own version of the capture of the Highway Rat with a clear beginning, middle and end. They had to use a lot of similes, adjectives and body language to create tension and a chase to grab their reader’s attention. As mom who was an English Lit major, I LOVE this cheeky little book...it's a retelling of/homage to Alfred Noyes' poem "The Highwayman" (without all the, you know, shooting and death and ghosts and whatnot). My son loves the great rhythm, and at two, fills in the words at the end of each stanza. The fact that it's a long poem makes it a fun read-aloud, and it's great to start to expose little ones to poetry concepts at an early age, from a literacy standpoint. Plus, it's just fun. The Highway Rat is a baddie and he takes whatever food he wants from any traveller that he stops. Pastries, puddings, buns, biscuits, nuts, fish, milk, flies and even a bunch of clover and a leaf, the last mentioned from an army of ants! He even steals his own horse's hay!

Absolutely marvelous! As an adult reader I totally adore the clever and delightful textual parody of Alfred Noyes' classic The Highwayman ballad (and indeed also much appreciate that with The Highway Rat, Julia Donaldson has just taken Alfred Noyes' external form and has not made her text content wise into some silly love story and her Highway Rat into a romantic type of hero, as no, that would in my opinion have made The Highway Rat annoyingly maudlin and not the engaging and so very much fun poetic parody of The Highwayman that it is).

As the story develops, the Highway Rat’s horse has to carry more of the things that he has stolen. How much might each of these things weigh? How much would the horse have to carry in total? Donaldson composed two musicals for children: King Grunt's Cake (1976) and Pirate on the Pier (1980) which she and a small cast performed both in London and Brighton. Influenced by their Bristol Street Theatre experience, Donaldson ran a Saturday-morning workshop for children in Portslade from 1974 to 1976. During these sessions a simple play would be devised, followed by making of props and costumes, rehearsal and then a performance. Rix, Juliet (28 February 2009). "Living without Hamish: how a family copes with suicide". The Guardian.Look at the use of rhyming words in the story. Can you think of other words which rhyme with the ones used? It could also be used for PSHE lessons, to explore why stealing is wrong and how it can affect the victim’s life. In science they can look at food chains and animal habitats and use the story to explore these topics further.

This seemingly teaches him a lesson, and, thinner, greyer and meeker, the Rat lands a job in a shop ... what kind of shop is for you to guess, but believe me it is probably an easy guess! Write a diary entry from the point of view of the Highway Rat. What does he do each day? How does he feel about it? Find out about the author, Julia Donaldson. Watch this video and think of questions that you might like to ask her.

The Highway Rat is described as a ‘baddie’ and a ‘beast’. Can you think of any other words that might be used to describe him? In her laureate role Donaldson has campaigned passionately against library cuts and closures, writing articles, meeting ministers and – with Malcolm Donaldson – embarking on a 6-week tour of UK libraries in autumn 2012. In all of the 38 libraries the visiting children were requested to perform a short play or song based on a picture book, as well as joining in Donaldson's own stories and songs. The tour was designed to celebrate libraries but also to generate publicity about the plight of some of them. [ citation needed] Personal life [ edit ] Draw a picture showing the inside of one of the Highway Rat’s bags. What different items has he stolen?