When the publishers sent me a review copy of Pinkoo Shergill: Pastry Chef, I devoured it. Even as I read it, I knew I wanted to introduce it to my book club soon. The only question I had was as to whether to introduce it to ages seven and eight, or nine and ten. Ultimately, I chose the latter for several reasons. For one, there’s so much we can do with the book in terms of creative writing! For another, it’s rather longer than the books I usually read at my book club for seven and eight-year-olds, so I felt I would not be able to do it justice with younger readers.
Pinkoo’s story is filled with a sense of urgency, which makes it a pacy read. I like the characters, the storyline and the telling – what more do I need?
Here’s what we will do with the book at my reading programme.
Portmanteau Words
We’ve worked with portmanteau words at my book club for the younger ones, and each time I do vocabulary activities of various kinds, I realise how much fun they are! Some activities are also worth repeating, simply because each time we do them, we enjoy them more. Fabtastic! Wowmazing! Spectaculous! These are words that Vibha Batra uses in the story. What can we come up with?
Recipes
In a book that is all about food, let’s create recipes of our own! The best thing about recipes that we don’t actually have to follow is that we can let our imaginations run wild. What ingredients could we put together? What cheftastic creations can we conjure up?
Creative writing is all about having fun with words and enjoying the process of writing. I can’t wait to see what this activity will lead to!
Genre
As this is the first book we will be reading in March, it is a good time to explore genre.
What genres do children enjoy reading? What kinds of stories do they like to write? We will do a genre quiz, following which we’ll briefly explore how we classify and categorise stories.
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