TP-14.4

Earth-Shattering Events by Robin Jacobs (£14.95, Cicada Books) It’s easy to take our domination of the planet for granted, but sometimes nature reminds us that this is an illusion. Tectonics rip open the earth, vast waves sweep away coastal towns, magma spews fromvolcanoes and hurricanes lay waste to entire countries. This book by Robin Jacobs explores nature at its most destructive. Clear, coherent explanations break down the science behind phenomena including hurricanes, tornadoes, avalanches, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes, while informative illustrations by SophieWilliams bring the information to life. Our favourite fact? In Japanese mythology, it is said that earthquakes are caused by a giant, underground-dwelling catfish calledNamazu who thrashes around, causing the ground to shake. The publisher has produced a guided reading resource for teachers (download it at tinyurl.com/ tpshattering) containing a vocabulary list, introductory questions, activity ideas and further reading recommendations. Literally by Patrick Skipworth (£11.99, What On Earth Books) Subtitled ‘Amazing words and where they come from’, this eye-catching picturebook fromchildren’s book editor Patrick Skipworth introduces pupils to the rich history and cultural diversity of the English language and reveals the diverse origins of 12 words. Each spread zeroes in on a specific word and explains the hidden stories contained within. Words investigated include ‘companion’ (original meaning: with bread), ‘ukulele’ (jumping flea) and ‘safari’ (journey). The author explores eachword’s cultural, geographical and historical connections, as well as what they literallymeant a long time ago. Nicholas Stevenson’s painterly illustrations depict both the oldmeaning of the word and the new one, enabling children to piece together the incredible puzzle that is our language. At the back of the book is extra information about language families, including a large worldmap depicting where different ones are spoken. Meet the author KS2 PATRICK SKIPWORTH ON THE SURPRISING ETYMOLOGIES OF ENGLISH WORDS How did you select the 12 words included in Literally? If you take a closer look at the story behind any word you’ll usually find out something surprising, so picking 12 words from a whole language wasn’t easy! I stuck to a rigorous criteria which helped me reduce a list of hundreds of entries down to just a dozen. I wanted to make sure that linguists were mostly in agreement about the etymologies for every word in Literally. For this stage, I’m indebted to Dr Benjamin Suchard at Leiden University in the Netherlands (where I also studied) who reviewed each entry. I also wanted to get a broad spread of origins from around the globe in the book, as well as looking for words with a variety of different types of etymologies, from onomatopoeias to compound words. What did you think when you first saw Nicholas Stevenson’s illustrations? The enchanting atmosphere of Nicholas’ illustrations were perfect for Literally as we knew that they would need to be surprising and a bit otherworldly, while still being appropriate for a non-fiction book. I had some initial ideas for most of the spreads but some of these didn’t work as well as I had hoped. Nicholas’ ideas here were crucial – some spreads went through several iterations to get the concept right. How would you like teachers to use the book in the classroom? I hope that Literally will be an engaging introduction to etymology that makes readers want to find out more about their own languages, whether that’s English or something else. In the classroom there’s definitely scope for students to research the etymologies of words and draw their own illustrations which reflect both the current meaning and the origin of the word. Since some etymologies are more problematic than others, teachers could come up with a list of words and share them out among students – the Oxford English Dictionary is a good resource for the etymologies of English words. www.teachwire.net | 57 KS2 HOME LEARNING Our teacher-made home learning packs contain enough literacy work to cover five mornings, with minimal adult supervision. Differentiated by year group, each pack contains a reading comprehension task, using extracts from classic books such as Robin Hood and The Sword in the Stone. Download them for free at plazoom.com/collections/ home-learning RESOURCES RECOMMENDED