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The Highway Rat (2011)

by Julia Donaldson(Favorite Author)

3.9 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1407124374 (ISBN13: 9781407124377)

languge

English

genre

Food & Cookbooks

publisher

Alison Green

review 1: his book tells the tale of a highway rat, a baddie, who terrorises his village stealing all the other animals’ food. Nicely illustrated with a rhyming scheme throughout, this book could be used in a multitude of ways in a KS1 classroom. There are PSHE links, as a discussion on stealing and how it affects the victim could be initiated after reading the story. Healthy eating habits could also be linked to the story. Literacy and creative writing could be developed as students discuss the attributes of the rat and other characters. As another reviewer has already suggested, ‘wanted’ posters could be created thus linking various areas of the curriculum together. Overall this book provides a lot of scope for different learning activities. It could be used as a springboard... more for quite a few different topics.
review 2: The Highway Rat by Julia Donaldson, the creator of Gruffalo, is a very interesting story. The highway rat is a greedy and selfish rat who robs all the animals travelling through highway. He robs them of their food and eats all himself. This results in all the animals getting thinner and weaker while the highway rat grows fatter and fatter. He crosses all the limits when he even eats his horse’s hay and leaves him to starve. Nothing satisfies his unquenchable greed for food. When he is faced with an old duck that does not have any food, he tries to eat her. Here duck tricks the highway rat, gets rid of him and shares all his loot with the poor hungry animals.The illustrations by Axel Scheffler are very vivid, colourful and attractive. The glossy pages make it even more beautiful. The character of the Highway Rat has been made interesting by giving him pirate hat, a cape, wellington boots and a sword. Children can be asked to describe the character of Rat and other animals. They can be also asked to describe the setting by showing picture illustrations in the book using the visualisor. The story has beautiful rhyming sentences that make it almost poetic when read aloud. The repetitions of “For I am the Rat of the Highway….” Comes often in the story and this encourages children to join in with the storytelling and gets them excited and involved. Children’s attention can be drawn to the use of inverted commas to show speech. The story can be read to younger children for the pure pleasure when they can join in with the repetitions. It can also be used for PSHE for children in KS1 to convey the moral of the triumph of good over evil. The evil rat is tricked by the good duck and is punished in the end. I read this story to my children and they absolutely loved it and when asked about the best thing they liked about the story, they said “I like when the Rat has to sweep the floor.” less

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