This book is part of Wordsmith, the complete programme for all your Primary English teaching needs.

This witty, refreshing treatise from a celebrated author and seasoned teacher is a passionate defense of reading -- just for the joy of it.
First published in 1992 and even more relevant now, Daniel Pennac's quirky ode to reading has sold more than a million copies in his native
France. Drawing on his experiences as a child, a parent, and an inner-city teacher in Paris, the author reflects on the power of story and reminds us of our right to read anything, anywhere, anytime, so long as we are enjoying ourselves. In a new translation with a foreword and illustrations
by Quentin Blake, here is a guide to reading unlike any other: fresh,
sympathetic, and never didactic, it is a work of literature in its own right.

A classic, essential read by master storyteller Daniel Pennac, with a new foreword written by Michael Morpurgo. The wolf has lost nearly everything on his journey to the zoo, including an eye and his beloved pack. The boy too has lost much and seen many terrible things. They stand eye to eye on either side of the wolf's enclosure and, slowly, each makes his own extraordinary story known to the other...

Pathetic, contrite and hapless, Benjamin is nonetheless the scapegoat at The Store: there is nothing for which he cannot be blamed. While his blunders remain minor, most of his unwitting victims can find it in their hearts to forgive him, but when violent explosions begin to follow him around, he inevitably becomes the prime suspect. With his girlfriend Julie by his side, Benjamin thrusts himself into uncovering the mystery, delving deep into underground Paris and pursuing the truth through a maze of bizarre criminality and oppressive shadows.

From a particularly humiliating accident at scout camp, to the final stages of terminal illness, Daniel Pennac's warm, witty and heart-breaking novel shows the rise and fall of an ordinary man, told through his observations of his own body. It is with damp eyes (not to mention underpants) that our narrator begins his diary, seeking through it to come to terms with the demoralising quirks of his fleshy confines. Through the joys and horrors of puberty to the triumphs of adolescence, we grow to love him through every growth, leak and wound, as he finds himself developing muscles, falling in love, and then leaving school to join the French Resistance. Yet, as ever, this is only half the story. As years pass and hairs grey, everything he took for granted begins to turn against him. Tackling taboo topics with honesty and charm, Pennac's wit remains sharp even as everything else begins to sag. This is a hugely original story of the most relatable of unlikely love stories: a human, and the body that defines him.

Daniel Pennac has never forgotten what it was like to be a very unsatisfactory student, nor the day one of his teachers saved his life by assigning him the task of writing a novel. This was the moment Pennac realized that no-one has to be a failure for ever. In School Blues, Pennac explores the many facets of schooling: how fear makes children reject education; how children can be captivated by inventive thinking; how consumerism has altered attitudes to learning. Haunted by memories of his own turbulent time in the classroom, Pennac enacts dialogues with his teachers, his parents and his own students, and serves up much more than a bald analysis of how young people are consistently failed by a faltering system. School Blues is not only universally applicable, but it is unquestionably a work of literature in its own right, driven by subtlety, sensitivity and a passion for pedagogy, while embracing the realities of contemporary culture.

In the bustling, multi-ethnic quarter of Paris known as Belleville, a policeman is shot dead by a sweet but gun-toting old granny when he tries to help her across the road. The grannies, it would appear, are fighting back against a reign of terror in Belleville that has seen half a dozen of them murdered by killers unknown. Into this tense situation stumble Benjamin Malaussène, professional scapegoat, and his journalist lover Julie. In Pennac’s frenetic and very funny thriller, drug dealers, OAPs, assorted criminals, a Vietnamese plainclothes detective and his cherubic partner, Malaussène’s large and extended family, and the resourceful scapegoat himself battle to make sense of the killings. Little does make sense in the anarchic world that Pennac has created but somehow, when the competing factions finally collide, the loyalty and decency of ordinary (and not so ordinary) people contrive to vanquish villainy.