Best of all are their smiles. “Before I had seen a yeti smile,” Lady Agatha would later say, “I didn’t know what a smile was.” Not only was the yeti’s smile beautiful, it was very, very comforting to anyone who might be worrying about being eaten. If you want to know what a person eats, look at his teeth. The yeti’s teeth were white and even and quite flat, like the teeth of a very clean sheep, and Agatha understood immediately not only that the yeti wouldn’t eat her but that he couldn’t eat her. And in fact, as she found out later, yetis are the strictest and most careful vegetarians. What kind of herbs was she on while in that valley? The country where people hunt foxes is not a good place to bring yetis. Y3 / Y4 The Abominables (by Eva Ibbotson) p.13-17 whole class guided reading. Word work, and differentiated retrieval and inference questions.

At first Lady Agatha was surprised by how easily the yetis took to a civilized English upbringing, but she soon realized that they were truly kind and considerate by nature, not only to each other, but to every living thing. In the mornings, when she combed them, they would cup their huge hands to catch the little spiders and beetles that had crept into their hair during the night, and release them carefully onto the ground. They always looked where they were putting their huge feet, avoiding worm casts and spiders’ nests and molehills, in case someone was at home. So they were particularly pleased when Agatha taught them to say sorry, for you should Always Apologize for Any Inconvenience You Have Caused.PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

When you write your chapter, think about all the writing techniques that you have been taught and see how many you can use in your chapter. Can you include any of the new words that you have explored this week? Eva's final novel that she completed prior to her death at the age of 85 in 2010 is called One Dog and his Boy. Born in Vienna, Eva Ibbotson came to England as a small girl. She spent much of her adult life in Newcastle upon Tyne. When her husband was alive he bred snails in the garage; they also kept fish and had a small and very hairy dog. Eva had four grown-up children and seven grandchildren. She wrote for both adults and children. Which Witch was runner-up for the Carnegie Medal and The Secret of Platform 13 was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize. Journey to the River Sea won the Smarties Book Prize Gold Award, was runner-up for the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year and the Guardian Fiction Award, and was also shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.

Discuss any new/interesting vocabulary that you encounter. Use a dictionary/thesaurus/https://www.wordhippo.com/ to find the meanings and some synonyms. In a peaceful hidden valley, Lady Agatha sets about a happy new life bringing up the Yeti children, teaching them to speak and insisting on perfect manners. But as time moves on, the valley is threatened by the arrival of helicopters, tourists and property developers, and Agatha, now an old lady, begins to worry about the safety of her naive and innocent charges, who she fears will be captured by the Yeti-hunters. When she came round, she knew at once where she was. There could only be one place as beautiful as this: heaven. The sky above her head was a marvelous rich, royal blue with little fleecy clouds. The grass on which she lay was soft and sweet-smelling and studded with beautiful flowers: tiny blue gentians, golden primulas, scarlet lilies. Agatha sat up. She felt sore and bruised, but that was understandable. You couldn’t die and go to heaven without feeling a little bit uncomfortable.