The Abominables

Product Information

A hundred years ago in the Himalayan mountains, the daughter of an English explorer is abducted from her mountainside tent by a huge hairy monster - none other than the infamous Yeti. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books to Ibbotson's The Secret of Platform 13, which came out three years before the first Harry Potter book.

The Abominables | BookTrust The Abominables | BookTrust

Ibbotson wrote this book in honor of her husband (who had died just before she wrote it), a former naturalist. It is a cute adventure that teaches you about goodness (and of course everything coming out all right). It's clear that Ibbotson was Not A Fan of rich people prancing all over the world and ruining natural sites with the need to have resorts and tours and so forth. However, it contains all the trademark qualities that made Eva's subsequent books including Journey to the River Sea and One Dog and his Boy so successful; comedy, loveable and eccentric characters, perfectly-crafted plotting, and inspiring themes of tolerance, kindness to animals, and the defeat of cruelty.In a secret valley Agatha Farley is introduced to a family of motherless yetis and devotes her life to their upbringing. When Agatha is kidnapped by a gigantic hairy monster on a Himalayan mountain, she soon discovers that the yeti is clever and kind. Anyway, when I was younger, I picked up The Secret of Platform 13 at a book sale, and Ibbotson charmed me with the wizard who grows turf on his head and the not so-hag-like hag and their merry misfit friends. I don't know how many kids reading this will pick up on this theme, but that's the most insidious kind of teaching: the one that people absorb without even realizing it. I also loved the topic of being kind to all creatures and that hunting for sport is quite disgusting.

The Abominables by Eva Ibbotson is a fabulous fun adventure - Twinkl The Abominables by Eva Ibbotson is a fabulous fun adventure -

We did lots of Burn2Learn and Imagineering work thinking about the different parts of a story and how to make it really interesting for our reader. The world that Eva Ibbotson has described is our own planet, but somehow she makes it all seem very magical. These books, set primarily in the Austrian countryside, display the author's love for nature and all things natural. Absolutely delightful little book with surprisingly deep and poignant themes, in the vein of Roald Dahl (albeit without the adulty undercurrent of snark and cynicism present in many of his works). But as time moves on, the valley is threatened by the arrival of helicopters, tourists and property developers, and Agatha, now an old lady, begins to worry about the safety of her naive and innocent charges, who she fears will be captured by the Yeti-hunters.

Each whole class reading session contains a series of activities aiming to develop children’s retrieval, explanation, inference, prediction and summarising skills. This is a quirky take on the Bigfoot/AbominableSnowpeople/Yeti/Sasquatch stories, with a very British sensibility. We worked in pairs where one of the members of the group was Con, blindfolded and climbing up the mountain, and our partner was a sherpa, guiding Con up the mountain.

The Abominables by Eva Ibbotson | Goodreads The Abominables by Eva Ibbotson | Goodreads

These whole class reading sessions aim to develop children’s comprehension skills, whilst introducing them to the novels of popular children’s author Eva Ibbotson. But the baby yak that has fallen in love with the youngest yeti foils the refrigeration plan and they set off on a hugely entertaining road trip half way across the world.

With unforgettable characters and thoughtful messages about the environment and advocacy, it’s a generous last gift to her many devoted fans. As part of our learning, we got active and did a Burn2Learn assault course on the field to try and recreate the assault course Tim and 'The Tigers' have to do in the story. Read and enjoy Chapter 1 of the text (below), by reading the text with an adult, by reading a paragraph or page to each other, or independent reading. In this case, the Abominables are adorable and guileless and sweet and totally harmless when you get to know them.