Week 8

     Key stage 3 Read of the week

The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell

Feodora and her mother live in the snowbound woods of Russia, in a house full of food and fireplaces. Ten minutes away, in a ruined chapel, lives a pack of wolves. Feodora's mother is a wolf wilder, and Feo is a wolf wilder in training. A wolf wilder is the opposite of an animal tamer: it is a person who teaches tamed animals to fend for themselves, and to fight and to run, and to be wary of humans.

When the murderous hostility of the Russian Army threatens her very existence, Feo is left with no option but to go on the run. What follows is a story of revolution and adventure, about standing up for the things you love and fighting back. And, of course, wolves.

Extract:

Wolf wilders are almost impossible to spot. A wolf wilder is not like a lion tamer nor a circus ring mas ter: wolf wilders can go their whole lives without laying eyes on a sequin. They look, more or less, like ordin ary people. There are clues: more than half are missing a piece of a fi nger, the lobe of an ear, a toe or two. They go through clean band ages the way other people go through socks. They smell very faintly of raw meat. In the western wild parts of Russia there are gangs of wolf merchants who hunt newborn pups. They snatch them, still wet and blind, and carry them away in boxes, selling them to men and women who live elegant lives in thick- carpeted houses in St Petersburg. A wolf pup can fetch a thou sand roubles, a pure white one as much as twice that. A wolf in the house is said to bring good fortune: money and fame, boys with clean noses and girls without pimples. Peter the Great had seven wolves, all as white as the moon.

Key stage 4/5 Read of the week

Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie

In Hercule Poirot's Christmas, the holidays are anything but merry when a family reunion is marred by murder — and the notoriously fastidious investigator is quickly on the case. The wealthy Simeon Lee has demanded that all four of his sons — one faithful, one prodigal, one impecunious, one sensitive — and their wives return home for Christmas. But a heartwarming family holiday is not exactly what he has in mind. He bedevils each of his sons with barbed insults and finally announces that he is cutting off their allowances and changing his will. Poirot is called in the aftermath of Simeon Lee's announcement.

Part 1 

December 22nd 

Stephen pulled up the collar of his coat as he walked briskly along the platform. Overhead a dim fog clouded the station. Large engines hissed superbly, throwing off clouds of steam into the cold raw air. Everything was dirty and smoke‐grimed.

Stephen thought with revulsion: ‘What a foul country—what a foul city!’ His first excited reaction to London, its shops, its restaurants, its well‐dressed, attractive women, had faded. He saw it now as a glittering rhinestone set in a dingy setting. Supposing he were back in South Africa now... He felt a quick pang of homesickness. Sunshine—blue skies—gardens of flowers—cool blue flowers—hedges of plumbago—blue convolvulus clinging to every little shanty. And here—dirt, grime, and endless, incessant crowds—moving, hurrying—jostling. Busy ants running industriously about their ant‐hill. For a moment he thought, ‘I wish I hadn’t come...’ Then he remembered his purpose and his lips set back in a grim line. No, by hell, he’d go on with it! He’d planned this for years. He’d always meant to do— what he was going to do. Yes, he’d go on with it! 

That momentary reluctance, that sudden questioning of himself: ‘Why? Is it worth it? Why dwell on the past? Why not wipe out the whole thing?’—all that was only weakness. He was not a boy—to be turned his this way and that by the whim of the moment. He was a man of forty, assured, purposeful. He would go on with it. He would do what he had come to England to do.