Zog

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The story of the dragons made me smile alot. It’s great to see them learn how to be dragons and make plenty of mistakes along the way. Dragon school looks cool and is a great idea for children to relate too. The dragons all learn to roar as loud as possible. Can you plan an investigation to measure how loud different sounds are?

The illustrations are as vivid, imaginative and amusing as you would expect from the illustrator of The Gruffalo, with subtle details that children and adults will love. The perfectly crafted rhyming text is ideal for reading aloud. And the ambitious princess is a great touch. The children then used their own story maps and had two lessons to re-tell the story in their own words in their Literacy books (I included an input on rhyming here - children to identify and match the rhymes from Zog) Lesson 3: ‘Roaring Lesson’ - the children all had a chance to roar and then we described each child's roar as a class on sugar paper.It was obvious in the movie that Zog didn’t really fit in with the other dragons. Pearl’s story was also expanded so I gained more of an understanding of the role she was being trained to fill. I liked them in the book but their personalities came to life on screen and I was more focused on their friendship developing through the years. I smiled while I read but I laughed throughout the movie. The two human characters become doctors. Can you plan some questions for an interview with a real doctor? There are numerous twists in the tale; the girl turns out to be a princess whose ambition it is to be a doctor rather than wearing silly dresses and hiding in castles, and the knight who comes to rescue her would rather ‘wear a twisty stethoscope’ than armour. A family film based on the much-loved picture book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler.

The story explains what the dragons learn each year at school. Could you make a story / poem about the things that you have learned during your time at school? Find some other images of dragons and use these as the starting point for your own? (see Resources below). We then created a whole class re-telling just using actions (which we later performed in a class assembly to the school).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.

I grew up in a tall Victorian London house with my parents, grandmother, aunt, uncle, younger sister Mary and cat Geoffrey (who was really a prince in disguise. Mary and I would argue about which of us would marry him). Volunteers then read their re-telling aloud to the class (two read their stories aloud in the class assembly to the school). Zog’ (2010) by the prolific and highly accomplished team of Julia Donaldson (author) and Axel Scheffler (illustrator) – is another solid, reliable and above all else, fun story with the usual lovely accompanying illustrations. Class got into groups and came up with an action for each scene in the story. Volunteers then showed their actions to the class to remember the story.

But a mysterious girl keeps coming to his rescue. And when Zog faces his toughest test yet, she may be just the person to help Zog win classroom glory! I really enjoy writing verse, even though it can be fiendishly difficult. I used to memorise poems as a child and it means a lot to me when parents tell me their child can recite one of my books. Zog is definitely a new favourite in our home, it is a beautifully written story with lots of nice rhymes and repetition , but it is perhaps not as good as some of the other Julia Donaldson books like the Gruffalo. However, the illustrations are spectacular and it really is one of the brightest, well illustrated baby books that we own so far. Zog is a keen dragon at Dragon School who aims to be the best in his class and win a golden star. The story follows his attempts at learning to fly, roar and breathe fire, leading to a series of minor injuries for which a mysterious girl provides assorted bandages and plasters.

I usually try to read the book before I see the movie because the book is always better, right? This time was different. I was introduced to Zog and Pearl via the short film, and it was only as I was watching the Special Features that I realised Zog had books written about him long before he was animated. I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married. In this much-loved picture book, a little mouse walks through the woods and encounters a fox, an owl and a snake.Madame Dragon first of all teaches her dragon pupils to fly and although Zog begins flying 'fast and free', he eventually crashes into a tree. He requires a plaster for his head and a little girl comes out of the woods to tend to his injuries ... and off he flies again. Princess Pearl doesn’t like silly frilly dresses. Can you design some new clothes that she might like? In Year 2, Madam Dragon ‘implores’ the dragons to roar louder. What does ‘implore’ mean? Can you think of any synonyms?