Wolves in Thewalls

The Wolves in the Walls Neil Gaiman Illustrated by Dave McKean

BEFORE YOU START Prepare a group journal to help you record group discussions and responses to the text as you work through the book.

Prepare an outline of the character Lucy, ready to complete using the Role on the Wall technique.

Focus: Predicting, Close Reading and Empathising

Share the front cover illustration without reading the blurb. Invite the children to discuss their initial observations and responses.

• What do you notice? • What do you like? What don’t you like? • What sort of story do you think this might be? What makes you think that? • Do you think you would choose this book for yourself? Why / why not? • Have you read anything else written by Neil Gaiman or illustrated by Dave McKean? The children might be familiar with Neil Gaiman’s other picture books and novels, including Chu’s Day illustrated by Adam Rex, Cinnamon illustrated by Divya Srinivasan, Coraline and The Graveyard Book illustrated by both Chris Riddell and Dave McKean, and Fortunately, The Milk illustrated by Chris Riddell. Dave McKean’s other illustrative works include: The Savage by David Almond, Varjak Paw by S.F. Said, and The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish by Neil Gaiman.

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• What do you think might happen in this story? What makes you think that? • What can you tell about the character on the cover? • How old do you think she might be? • What do you think she’s doing? • How do you think she’s feeling? • What might she be thinking? How do you know? • What can we tell from her facial expression or body language? • What might she be looking at? • What is she not looking at? How does that make you feel? • What might have happened just before this image? What might be about to happen? • Does this remind you of other stories you know? [The children may make connections with other horror or supernatural stories.] Note down the children’s early predictions and responses, to reflect on when they have finished the book.

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© Bloomsbury Read and share the illustrations for the first four spreads (up to ‘hatching their wolfish schemes’). Ask the children to discuss their responses to the text so far. Begin to explore their responses to the start of the book with the help of the four basic questions. These questions can be used as a basis for discussion throughout the sessions.

• Tell me… was there anything you liked about this text? • Was there anything that you particularly disliked… ? • Was there anything that puzzled you? • Were there any patterns… any connections that you noticed… ? As children respond it can be useful to write down what they say under the headings ‘likes’, ‘dislikes’, ‘puzzles’ and ‘patterns’. Record the children’s responses in the journal and return to any queries as the sessions continue.

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Give the children time to return to each of the illustrations and consider the role they play in telling the story, as well as the text.

• How do the illustrations make you feel? • What aspects of the illustrations make you feel that way? • Which methods has Dave McKean used to create these illustrations? • Why might he have made those particular decisions? • What do you like about them? What don’t you like? On his website (www.davemckean.com/personal/faq), Dave McKean summarises his approach to materials: “I use whatever is appropriate for the job. If the story needs close storytelling and a light, simple style of narrative, then probably pen and ink, or brushpen, or pencil would be best. If the story needs a more symbolic approach then maybe collage, or paint, or digital. It all comes down to the emotion and atmosphere you want to convey.” There is also a short video you could share in which he talks further about these decisions: Dave McKean talks about his illustration techniques – CILIP CKG Children’s Book Awards: https://vimeo.com/41273134.

As the children respond to the illustrations, encourage them to consider the layout and composition of each image. Look at lines and patterns, facial expressions, body language, props, perspective, scale, colour and the interaction between the words and the pictures.

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• How much more do you know about her now? • How does this compare to the predictions you made at first? • How do you think Lucy feels? What makes you think that? • How do her feelings change across these four spreads? • How does she feel at the start when she is walking around the house? • When does she start to hear the noises? • Is there anything that exacerbates her feelings of unease and fear? ––––––

Encourage the children to empathise with Lucy. Draw out any personal connections they wish to share.

• Have you ever had a worry or a fear that someone didn’t believe? How did that make you feel? • Have you ever heard strange noises and created an image in your mind of what it might be? • How would you feel if you heard strange noises in the walls? • What would you do if this happened to you? • Why do you think Lucy picks up and speaks to her childhood toy? • Have you ever had a special toy or object that was a comfort to you? ––––––

“I’m sure it’s not wolves [...] For you know what they say... If the wolves come out of the walls, then it’s all over. [...] Everybody knows that.”

Discuss what might be meant by this statement.

• Have they ever heard anyone use the phrase ‘You know what they say’? • If so, then when and why might it be used? The children might have heard it in other stories or before somebody shares a proverb or idiom, such as “You know what they say… don’t put all your eggs in one basket” or “You know what they say… good things come to those who wait...’’. The class could collect and define proverbs they know, before creating their own.

Discuss any questions or puzzles that are raised by Lucy’s mother’s statement.

• Who might ‘they’ be? • What is the ‘it’ that will be over? • If ‘everybody’ knows that, then why doesn’t Lucy? • Are the children surprised by Lucy’s mother’s response? Why / why not? ––––––

Finish the session by comparing what has been discovered with the children’s initial ideas. Ask them to predict how the story might develop from this point.

Focus: Summarising, Empathising and Close Reading

Ask the children to summarise what you have discovered so far and their first impressions of Lucy and her family. Re-read from the beginning and then on to the next double page spread (up to ‘and he went back to practising his tuba’). Discuss the children’s observations about her father’s response.

• How is Lucy’s father’s response similar to or different from her mother’s? • How would you describe Lucy’s father’s characterisation? • How has Dave McKean responded to the father’s dialogue in his depiction of the character? • How would you describe Lucy’s father’s attitude towards Lucy, her pig and her fears? • How does it make you feel? How do you imagine Lucy might feel? ––––––

Continue to explore the children’s responses with the help of the four basic questions. You might consider any other stories the children know in which wolves are feared.

• How are the wolves in those stories normally characterised? • What are the features of those stories? In pairs or small groups, the children could note down and discuss some of those stories, which could include folk tales such as The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, Peter and the Wolf and The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

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Continue to explore Lucy’s relationship with her different family members. Put the children into pairs and ask each pair to choose one of the three conversations featured in the book so far. Give them time to allocate a character to each person and to rehearse the direct speech only as a performance reading. Ask them to reflect back on the discussions about each character’s attitudes and feelings and to try to convey that through how they say the words. After each pair has had sufficient time to practice, ask some pairs to volunteer to perform their dialogue.

• What similarities and differences do they notice between different pairs’ interpretations of the same text? ––––––

Reflect on the events of the story so far and the character of Lucy. Ask the children to complete a Role on the Wall for Lucy. Ask the children to come up with words or phrases to describe Lucy’s feelings or personality and her outward appearance or behaviour.

To promote a higher level of thinking, ask the children to consider what we know from Lucy’s speech and what we have to infer from her body language and gestures. Encourage them to draw on both the text and the illustration for evidence.

• What does something Lucy does tell us about her personality? • And how does her personality make that action seem most likely (‘in character’)? Encourage the children to return to the Role on the Wall as you read the story, using a different colour each time to show the knowledge they gain as they read more and to track the emotional journey Lucy takes.

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© Bloomsbury Read the first part of the next spread up to “It’s too quiet”, if possible covering the text at the bottom of the page. Ask for the children’s responses to the illustration of Lucy in bed.

• How do you think Lucy might feel at this moment? Vocabulary

Encourage the children to move beyond ‘scared’. Work together to create a list of words and phrases that could be used as a synonym for ‘scared’. Then, in small groups, ask children to place the words in a sequence from most scared to least scared. Encourage them to discuss each word or phrase, justifying its position on their scale of intensity. Afterwards, return to the illustration.

• Is there a word or phrase on the scale that is most appropriate for this moment in the story? ––––––

Read the rest of the page and the next spread, in which the wolves finally come out of the walls. If possible, give out copies of the illustration to each group for them to annotate with their observations and responses.

• How did you feel when you first saw the image? • What made you feel that way? • What’s the first thing you noticed in the illustration? • Is there anything different about this illustration compared with the rest of the book so far? What similarities or differences have you noticed? • How has the background changed? What does it look like? • How has the illustrator helped the reader to empathise with Lucy and her family at this moment? • What does this mean for Lucy? What does this mean for her family?

Focus: Empathising, Close Reading and Questioning

Read the next two spreads up to ‘They could do dreadful things to her’. Ask the children to summarise and respond to the family’s three suggestions for what they should do now that the wolves have come out of the walls. Consider why the family might imagine these places to be good options and ask the children to suggest their own ideas.

• What have the three ideas all got in common? • What is Lucy’s response to the family’s ideas? • What reasons are there to stay? • How might she convince the family not to leave the house? • Why do you think Pig Puppet might be so important to her? ––––––

For further insight into how Lucy might be thinking or feeling at this point, ask children to return to the final illustration on the spread with Lucy curled up at the bottom of the garden.

• How is the illustration similar to the other illustrations we’ve seen of Lucy unable to sleep? How is it different? • Is it better or worse now that her fears have been proven? • What might she be thinking about? • What clues are there in the text and illustration? • How is the wolf depicted in this illustration? • Do the wolf’s limbs remind you of anything? Why might Dave McKean have drawn them this way? ––––––

© Bloomsbury Explain to the group that you are going to hot-seat in role as Lucy so that they can explore her viewpoint and her feelings further. Ask the children to discuss and decide on five questions that they would ask Lucy at this point in the story. Challenge them further by asking them to:

• predict the answers to the questions • restructure the questions so they provoke a deeper response: discuss different ways of phrasing questions and model how to recast a closed question as an open one. Ask the children to choose their three most effective questions. Then take the hot-seat, allowing for discussion around your answers to the children’s three questions.

After the hot-seating, revisit the Role on the Wall for Lucy and record any additional knowledge the children have gained about her character.

Return to the illustration and ask children to sketch a thought bubble for Lucy, drawing on both the discussion and the hot-seating activity.

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Ask them to discuss what they think Lucy is going to do. Encourage them to think about what we know so far about Lucy’s characteristics, referring back to the Role on the Wall and what this means for what she might do.

• What seems likely? Why? ––––––

Read on the next three spreads up to ‘back to sleep, cuddling her pig’, stopping to respond to the illustrations, clarify the children’s understanding and allow for discussion around the four basic questions. As well as exploring how the illustrations might provoke tension, excitement, fear, humour and warmth across the three spreads, look at how the sentence structure and its layout on the page affect the emotional response of the reader, the choices made when reading aloud and the pace of the reading.

• Are there any particular words or phrases that you particularly liked or that you found particularly effective or evocative? The children might consider the impact of the two rhetorical questions when Lucy is almost caught on the stairs; the similes used to describe Lucy’s behaviour in the house (‘quieter than any mouse’, ‘quick as the flick of the wing of a bat’, ‘quiet as a shadow’); the long sentence describing Lucy’s journey back into the wall after retrieving her toy; or the emphasis given to particular words by the typography, such as ‘squeezed’ or ‘MY pig-puppet’.

Focus: Empathising, Close Reading and Visualising

Read the next two spreads up to ‘sleeping at the bottom of the garden’. Ask the children to summarise the four family members’ current opinions of what they should do about the wolves occupying their house. Discuss their initial response to Lucy’s idea.

• What do you think Lucy is suggesting they do? • Do you agree with Lucy’s idea? Why / why not? • What benefits are there? • What challenges or risks might there be? ––––––

Give the children time in small groups to create a list of suggestions for what the family could do. Give out strips of paper or small cards for them to write out their suggestions. Once they have had enough time to create 5 or 6 suggestion cards, ask them to revisit each one and add a clause explaining why they think it is a good idea. Finally, have each group sequence their suggestions from the one that they feel has the most potential down to the least. Spend some time sharing the suggestions as a class.

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© Bloomsbury Explain that you would like to write a note of advice to the family so they can avoid spending the night at the bottom of the garden again. Revisit the children’s suggested ideas and work together to choose a few promising possibilities. Use the children’s suggestions to shared write a note of advice. Spend some time discussing with the children how to effectively start and end your message.

• What is most appropriate? • What might convince the family? • What could we suggest they do? Keep returning to the focus and purpose of the writing. When it is finished, re-read the letter with the children and discuss how effective it is in helping the family overcome their dilemma.

• Does it offer hope or give suggestions for what they could do next? You could ask the children to pretend to be a family member, opening and reading the letter aloud to the rest of the family, and discussing how they feel after reading it.

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Read the next five spreads up to ‘an old wolf melody on Lucy’s Father’s second-best tuba’. On this occasion read aloud the text without sharing any of the illustrations. You could pause briefly after ‘the wolves were having a party’ so that the children can predict what sort of activities they imagine the wolves might engage in at a party.

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© Bloomsbury Explain to the children that you are going to re-read this section again and they should try to visualise the scene in their mind’s eye as you read. Read the section aloud two or three times and then ask them to describe to a partner what they pictured.

Ask the children to share what they imagined and to identify key vocabulary or phrases which support their understanding or interpretation. If time allows, the children could create their own illustrations of what they visualised and draw on this to support their discussion. Ask the children which words or phrases in particular stood out to them.

• What made these words or phrases so vivid or memorable? • What mood or sense of place is created by the author through the descriptions? • Which words or phrases helped you to see the setting in their mind’s eye? • How do these descriptions make you feel? • How would they describe the wolves’ behaviour? • How do they think the family feels at this moment? • What do you predict will happen? Return to the book and explore Dave McKean’s vivid illustrations, comparing them with the children’s own visualisation.

• How do the illustrations compare with your expectations? • How are they similar or different to your own visualisation? • How has Dave McKean responded to the text? • What aspects of the text do you think he is drawing on? • How do they make you feel? • Is that similar or different to how the text made you feel? Why do you think that is? ––––––

Discuss Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s characterisation of the wolves. As explored at the start of the story, these wolves are inspired by folk tales, but discuss how that might compare to the behaviour of a real wolf in the wild. A variety of appropriate non-fiction texts could be made available for children to access as part of some directed independent reading or as a research opportunity.

Focus: Rereading, Close Reading and Noting the Text Structure

Read to the end of the story and allow for discussion around the four basic questions. Discuss the children’s responses to the ending of the book.

• Did you like the end of the book? Why / why not? • How do you think the family has changed by the end of the story? How were they still the same? • How did you feel about the family at the end? How did they feel about the wolves? • Were you surprised by the ending? • What did you think of Lucy’s conversation with her pig puppet? Were you surprised when it talked back? • Do you think Lucy should have told her family about the elephants? Why / why not? Add any final reflections and observations to the Role on the Wall for Lucy.

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Discuss different tones and expressions a reader might use when reading a text aloud and how that impacts our experiences of hearing it and our understanding of the story. Choose a few pages which feature tension and drama. Model reading aloud these pages, explicitly talking about choices that you are making as a reader in response to the language used by the author, the layout on the page and the illustration accompanying the text. Discuss how you might read onomatopoeic words or how you might build tension in the longer sentences. Share explicitly the decisions you make as a reader around when to speed up or slow down, when to be louder and when to be quieter.

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© Bloomsbury Divide the children into groups and allocate a different section of the book to each group. Give them time to rehearse a performance reading of their allocated pages. Encourage them to draw out the most important words and phrases, and to consider how they might use their voices to communicate effectively.

• Are there sections that you will all read together? • Are there sections that would work better with one voice? • Are there sections where you need to speed up or slow down or get louder or quieter? • Are there places where sound effects or movement might help the meaning and the atmosphere? Encourage the children to keep asking themselves how they would like the reader to feel at each moment and what the best way to enhance that feeling is.

Ask each group to perform their section in sequence to create a performance reading of the entire text. You could record this performance to share with other classes or for children to listen back to in the book corner. You could display this alongside a CD of Neil Gaiman reading aloud the book (the current paperback edition comes with a CD of the author reading the story).

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Discuss how the children felt about the book compared to their original expectations.

• When you first saw this book, what kind of book did you think it was going to be? • What made you think this? • Now you’ve read it, was it as you expected? • Have you read other books or stories like it? How is this one the same? How is it different? • Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why / why not? ––––––

These resources were created by Bloomsbury and The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE). For more teaching resources, visit: www.bloomsburyguidedreading.com www.clpe.org.uk