Jack is the new guy on the block - a gregarious and animated character with a great sense of fun about him, someone who regularly saves the day for people in his community. His key strength is his ability to lift heavy loads, and this provides a wealth of material for his many and varied exploits, both at work and play. Along with his friends, Jack takes the reader through a series of unique and stimulating situations. "Jack and Friends" targets the shortfall in children's books for young boys aged 5 to 9 years and fits into the "Thomas the Tank Engine" genre. It features intelligent storylines and employs a 21.6 cm (8.5 inch) square format, with 40 large full colour illustrations by the talented Shirley Chiang. Using pen, ink and acrylics, Shirley has created imagery that's rich in character and soul. The accompanying text has been carefully harmonised with the illustrations and given a uniform level of reading 'difficulty' throughout. Storylines are innovative and entertaining, and subtly encourage readers to think, be community-minded, and adopt safe habits.
Younger children will enjoy having the book read to them, whilst 6 to 8 year olds will be able to read it unaided on a progressive scale of competence. Book 2 is in the planning stage. To quality assure "Jack and Friends", it was piloted at six Primary schools. Around 470 pupils provided feedback on the book through either real-time classroom reviews or Book Review templates. They related well to the main character, found the storylines engaging and loved the illustrations. Teachers praised the book for its well structured content and the 'challenging' words in the narrative. Overall, the feedback was of the order of 90% positive. "Jack and Friends" is a book children can re-visit as their reading and comprehension advances. Importantly, the young reviewers were unanimous in stating they'd be tempted to pick up the book if they saw it on display in a bookshop.
This is Book 1 in the Jack and Friends Series. See all Jack and Friends books here.
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SHI NAI'AN (1296--1371), was a classical Chinese author attributed as the first compiler of Water Margin from Suzhou. Some modern scholars doubt that Shi actually existed, and believe his was a teacher of Luo Guanzhong, who was attributed as a main compiler of Romance of Three Kingdoms. CHRISTINE SUN was born in Taiwan, and studied English and Chinese litera
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