The Highway Rat

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The author uses different words to describe how the Highway Rat speaks (e.g. declared, bellowed). Can you think of any more?

Before Malcolm and I had our three sons we used to go busking together and I would write special songs for each country; the best one was in Italian about pasta. Find out about the highwaymen of the past. What did they do? Do you know the names of any famous highwaymen?Poetry also featured strongly in Donaldson's early life; she was given The Book of a Thousand Poems by her father when she was five years old, and her grandmother introduced her to Edward Lear’s nonsense rhymes. Donaldson attended New End Primary School and then Camden School for Girls. During her childhood and adolescence she acted (understudying the fairies in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream at The Old Vic where she made the acquaintance of a young Judi Dench and Tom Courtenay), sang with the Children's Opera Group, and learned the piano. Elizabeth worked as a part-time secretary and helped her boss, Leslie Minchin, translate German lieder into English. It was a household of music and song: Elizabeth sang with the Hampstead Choral Society, Jerry played the cello in amateur string quartets, and both parents were active members of the Hampstead Music Club. Summer holidays were at Grittleton House in Wiltshire, where Jerry played his cello in a summer school for chamber music, while Julia and Mary romped around and put on musical shows with the other children. It seems to serve the development of comprehension skills and other social and emotional aspects of learning quite neatly. The Highway Rat is described as a ‘baddie’ and a ‘beast’. Can you think of any other words that might be used to describe him? Absolutely marvelous! As an adult reader I totally adore the clever and delightful textual parody of Alfred Noyes' classic The Highwayman ballad (and indeed also much appreciate that with The Highway Rat, Julia Donaldson has just taken Alfred Noyes' external form and has not made her text content wise into some silly love story and her Highway Rat into a romantic type of hero, as no, that would in my opinion have made The Highway Rat annoyingly maudlin and not the engaging and so very much fun poetic parody of The Highwayman that it is).

Both Julia and Axel enjoy international renown for their work. Julia was the UK Children’s Laureate 2011-13 and honoured with an MBE for services to Literature. Axel’s artwork is exhibited internationally; he has illustrated for many charities, and designed the Royal Mail Christmas stamps in 2012.

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As mom who was an English Lit major, I LOVE this cheeky little book...it's a retelling of/homage to Alfred Noyes' poem "The Highwayman" (without all the, you know, shooting and death and ghosts and whatnot). My son loves the great rhythm, and at two, fills in the words at the end of each stanza. The fact that it's a long poem makes it a fun read-aloud, and it's great to start to expose little ones to poetry concepts at an early age, from a literacy standpoint. Plus, it's just fun. We have spoken about how the book rhymes, and how it can be read in a rhythmical way. The second time that we read it, the children were able to join in with some of the repetitive sentences, which they all really enjoyed. The Highway Rat’s manners were ‘rough and rude’. Can you make a list of good manners to help the Highway Rat be nicer to others? I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married.