Books
Year group
One Small Lie
Bill has left his reading book at school, so when Mum asks if he has done his twenty minutes, he says yes. It takes one second. By Saturday there is a parcel on the table he cannot look at, six more lies holding up the first one, and a boy called Ray who never borrowed anything. On Sunday it all falls apart at the shops. The new word is tangled.
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The Boy Who Never Trained
Bob was born fast and has a shelf full of medals to prove it. Training is boring, so he goes twice and stops. Dan came last in his first race and cried where nobody could see him. He goes to training in the rain, and with a hurt ankle, and nobody notices him for two years. Then the big race comes in June, and for the first time in his life Bob hears feet next to him. The new word is talent.
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FreeThe Cleaner's Name
A man cleans Tom's school from half past six in the morning until five at night. For two and a half years Tom walks past him twice a day and never says good morning. Then a class project sends Tom out to the bins with a list of questions, and question one is what is your name. The new word is respect.
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The Extra Point
Lily's maths test comes back with 20/20 and a gold star, the only full marks in the class all year. But question fourteen is wrong, and only Lily knows. Her answer was 48, the right answer was 42, and Miss Chan's pen made a tick instead of a cross. Twenty should be nineteen, and nobody will ever find out unless Lily says so. The new word is deserved.
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The Game and the Garden
Ken gets a tablet for his birthday and a game called Sky Kingdom. Every day you play you get a prize, and if you miss one day you go back to the start. So Ken does not miss a day. While the number at the top of the screen gets bigger, a flat tyre, a friend at the door and four books go quietly missing, and Gran says he looks like a plant nobody has watered. Then the screen cracks, and eleven days without the tablet turn out to be the best part of the story. The new word is balance.
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The Grudge
In March, Meg tells Anne's secret to the whole class. It is a small secret, a toy rabbit, and Meg says sorry properly on the Thursday. Anne says okay, and then quietly decides never to forgive her. Meg is sad for a few weeks and gets on with her life. Anne carries it for eight months, past a desk, a lunch table and a saved seat, until the rain floods the school and there is nowhere else to sit. The new word is grudge.
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The House at the End of the Lane
The grey house at the end of Ken's lane has a rusty gate, grass as tall as the windows, and an old man who shouts at any child whose ball goes over the wall. Ken calls him the meanest man in the world, and he has never spoken to him once. Then his ball goes over, and he has to knock. What he finds behind the tall grass is not what he decided two years ago. The new word is assumed.
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The Straw on the Beach
On the last day of the holiday, Mia finds a turtle at the far end of the beach where the seaweed piles up. A plastic ring from a drinks can has slipped over its front flipper and pulled tight. A woman called Ruth comes in a green van, cuts the ring off, and tells Mia how many of those she takes off animals on that one beach in one year. Mia spends her last two hours walking the beach with a plastic bag, and does about forty steps of it. The new word is pollution.
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The Volcano That Failed
Sam builds a volcano for the science fair, tests it once, and says it will be fine on the day. On the day, one pink bubble comes up and pops, and somebody laughs. Sam puts the volcano in the bin. His dad takes it out again, because a failed experiment is full of information, and together they work backwards and find three mistakes. The new word is experiment.
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Walking in Her Shoes
Everybody in Ben's class has decided why Joy says no to everything, and Ben has agreed, because agreeing is easier than looking. Then Miss Chan writes one sentence on the board and reads out four slips of paper with no names on them, and Ben starts watching more carefully. He notices when Joy leaves, how she leaves, and what is in her bag. He does not ask her about any of it. What he does instead is one sentence about lunch. The new word is empathy.
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