The Monster in the Lake

The Monster in the Lake

By Author / Illustrator

Louie Stowell, Davide Ortu

Genre

Adventure

Age range(s)

7+

Publisher

Nosy Crow Ltd

ISBN

9781788000451

Format

Paperback / softback

Published

09-01-2020

Synopsis

Kit is a wizard.The youngest wizard in the world, in fact. But her magic keeps going wrong, and all kinds of weird stuff has started happening - exploding fireballs, animals talking when they shouldn't be, and a very strange new arrival in a nearby park. So Kit and her two best friends - along with their local librarian - set off to investigate, and to save the world... again.Brilliantly illustrated throughout by Davide Ortu, The Monster in the Lake is the funny, exciting, action-packed sequel to The Dragon in the Library.

Reviews

Hayley

Louie Stowell is back with yet another magnificent adventure, The Monster in the Lake. From the onset we are reintroduced to Kit, Alita, Josh and Faith who take us on another enchanted tale in order to save the world. I simply love how Louie Stowell brings back her characters. She reconnects us to them by using light-hearted humour. With Kit now a trainee wizard, we follow her through a series of events in the Book Wood, where every spell seems to go wrong without a reason. It is not until she takes a walk in the park with Alita and Josh that things seem to come into perspective as she hears talking dogs. Despite being the youngest wizard in the world, Kit knows that her spells going wrong and the presence of talking animals, as well as Dogon feeling out of spirit, is no coincidence. Having discussed the peculiar events with Faith, they decide to investigate, only to discover a new resident in the pond of the local park and high levels of wild magic. Entwined with mystery and adventure, this story takes Kit and the rest of her friends on an adventure to investigate a Loch that is home to bullying mermaids, curses and old dragons. Using a new portal book, Kit, Faith, Alita and Josh transport to Invergloy where they are greeted by Duncan who is keeper of the mobile library and will in turn help them to solve the mystery of the Loch. As the story unfolds, Kit is able to discover the true abilities of her power and help save the world from the rise of wild magic. This book would be excellent to use if you were teaching the topic of the enchanted wood in Year 2 because it has a magical element, or Flow in Year 3 or 4 because it is connected to the water which would allow pupils to discuss and explore Scottish Lochs; children could also learn about myths and legends that relate to Scottish heritage. There are so many links that you could make to the KS1/KS2 curriculum from this book. I would recommend this if you were teaching an adventure story because there are some many different parts of the story you could explore. Dilemmas, settings and character descriptions would be excellent teaching points. Also, there are many themes you could use as teaching points - friendship, reading for pleasure and growth are all promoted by the characters within the story. This book has numerous qualities that would help engage the most reluctant of readers in KS1 and KS2. 224 pages / Age 7+ / Reviewed by Hayley Summerfield, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 7+

 

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