Texts Used
| Texts used. |
Fiction or non - fiction |
Themes | Ability level | Information on text |
| Zlata’s Diary,Zlata Filipovic(1994), London: Penguin. | Non - fiction | A girl growing up in a war zone. Set in Sarajevo. | Middle/Top | Has the same subject matter as Anne Frank’s diary, although writing is not as sophisticated. More accessible for today’s reader, taking into consideration the language used. |
| The Diary of Anne Frank. Anne Frank (1947), London: Hutchinson. | Non - Fiction | A young teenagers perspective of Nazi rule over Holland during the second world war and relationship. | Middle/Top | This shares the theme of Zlata’s diary.This text would be best used as excerpts. This is in part due to the language used and the length of the text. |
| Pirate Diary, The Journal of Jake Carpenter, David Platt, Chris Riddell, (1999) London: Walker. | Fiction | Historical facts in a fictional diary format. It is the diary of a boy in the 18th century living on board a pirate ship. | Middle | This book is a fictional diary, however, it includes accurate historical facts. It would be useful to create a glossary prior to a group reading in order to aid comprehension.This would be a good text to engage reluctant boy readers. |
| The Diary of a Killer Cat, Anne Fine, (1994) London: Penguin. | Fiction | The killer cat observes the family around him and cannot understand their reactions to his behaviour. | Lower | Although it is an easy read it provides opportunities for children to infer subtext. The viewpoint is the cats. This allows children to explore writing from different perspectives. |
| Kensuke’s Kingdom, Michael Morpurgo, (1999), London: Egmont. | Fiction | Michael and his family embark on a round the world sailing trip. The book explores relationships, communication, loss and loyalty. | Group shared text | This text allows children to understand the difference between writing for information - in the ships log, and writing descriptively - on the island. This is important for teaching about writing for purpose. Use this book to show a comparison between emotional descriptive diary writing (Anne Frank , Zlata) and diary writing to record facts. |
| El Caminate (The Traveller), Debra Smith, (1997), UK: BFI Education. Animation. | Fiction | A 5 minute animation telling the story of a travelling showman coming to a village. | Group shared text | Allows for many levels of inference using practical activities and written tasks. There is no direct speech, this gives room for children to use their imagination to explore the characters and their thoughts. |