Mia Underwood – illustratör

Ben can cook good jerk chicken. But when he falls off the ladder, who will run his chicken van? Ben's Jerk Chicken Van is a low level phonics reading book. Beautifully illustrated throughout, this 481-word fiction story features a fully decodable text, suitable for struggling teen and adult readers.Ben's Jerk Chicken Van uses a carefully limited set of letters and sounds to make up all the words. (For UK schools this relates to Phase 3 of Letters and Sounds, the UK Government's synthetic phonics reading programme.)Ben's Jerk Chicken Van is part of Ransom's Neutron Stars, a structured reading programme for teens and adults learning the basics of reading. The series offers progression through ten levels of reading, four phonics and six coloured book bands.More information on the structure of the scheme can be found here.

If you imagined that all Stone Age people lived in caves, were not very clever, not very clean and said “Ugg” a lot, then think again. Marking the start of all human history, the Stone Age lasted around 3.5 million years (the last part of that was only 71 grandparents ago!). Delve into that incredible time with this book packed full of amazing facts, information, crafts, storytelling and myth debunking to find out what it was really like to live as a hunter gatherer.Many of our Stone Age ancestors’ everyday needs were similar to ours – how to keep warm, where to sleep and what to eat and drink. We find out how they met those needs, what a typical day was like, what medicine they used and even how they had fun – all brought to life with beautifully detailed illustrations. Dotted through the book are step-by-step craft activities and recipes that give you first-hand experience of some vital Stone Age skills – making a Mesolithic shelter, fat lamps, a digging stick, creating cave art, making a bow and arrow and a fishing hook are just a few.A fictional tribe member pops up throughout the book to tell us about her life, describing the sights, sounds, smells and emotions she experiences. The safety of a warm cave with flickering firelight and other tribe members nearby, the gnawing feeling of hunger when food is scarce and the excited relief when a deer is hunted.

This book reveals what it was like to live in the turbulent Tudor times, when England’s kings and queens held absolute power over their subjects, and stepping out of line meant a whipping or worse. From Henry VII to Elizabeth I, the Tudor monarchs were colourful, powerful people who presided over an era of naval expansion, exploration and trade.Children will learn about ordinary people’s day-to-day lives, from what they wore and ate to how they spent their free time and what kind of jobs they did. They will get to know a young, fictional Elizabethan girl, as she tells them about her life, from helping her mother with the laundry to visiting the Globe theatre and having a visit from a doctor.Dotted throughout the book are craft activities and recipes to have ago at, such as making Tudor spiced pears, learning how to play Tudor games and how to dance like a Tudor.