The Lion and the Unicorn

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Alfie starred in many subsequent stories, along with his little sister Annie Rose, including An Evening at Alfie’s, Alfie Gives a Hand and Alfie Wins a Prize. Their simple childhood adventures, set in a British urban world of birthday parties, park visits and local fairs, were fittingly modernised over the years and continued to delight generations of children and their parents, with the most recent book in the series, Alfie on Holiday, published in 2019. Much later, she wrote fiction: The Lion and the Unicorn (2000), a short novel with many illustrations for six- to eight-year-olds, and two wartime adventures, Hero on a Bicycle (2012) and Whistling in the Dark (2016). In 2012 she published Dixie O’Day: In The Fast Lane!, the first in an illustrated series created jointly with her daughter, Clara Vulliamy. For her last book, written at the age of 92, she returned to the story of the lost toy dog with a seasonal sequel, Dogger’s Christmas, published in 2020. Shirley Hughes illustrated more than 200 children's books and is one of the best-loved writers for children, known for her beloved classics including the Alfie and Annie Rose stories, and Dogger. Shirley Hughes has won the Other Award, the Eleanor Farjeon Award, and the Kate Greenaway Medal for Illustration twice, for Dogger in 1977 and for Ella's Big Chance in 2003. In 2007 Dogger was voted the public's favourite Greenaway winner of all time. She was Highly Commended for the Greenaway Medal for The Lion and the Unicorn in 1998. Shirley received an OBE in 1999 for services to Children's Literature, and a CBE in 2017. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was the first recipient of BookTrust's Lifetime Achievement Award. There is a Spelling Seed session for every week of the associated Writing Root. Coverage: Word List Words

The main character name's Lenny, he lives with her mum because his father has gone at war. Lenny is an insecure child but his father’s badge, with lion and unicorn, cheers him up. One day the mother thinks it’s better for Lenny to go to the country to escape the bombing. In country side Lenny lives with 2 girls and the owners in a very big house. Shirley Hughes was born in West Kirby, near Liverpool, in 1927, and studied fashion and dress design at Liverpool Art School, before continuing her studies at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford. She started her career as a freelance illustrator in London, illustrating other writers' work, including Noel Streatfeild, Alison Uttley, Ian Seraillier and notably Dorothy Edwards's My Naughty Little Sister series. The name of the book this is “Lion and Unicorn”, it was wrote and illustrated by Shirley Hughes. The first version was published in 1998. But their is an other version published on 7 September 2000 by the publisher Red Fox. Shirley Hughes has received a lot of awards but I don't know if this book has won an award. I think Lenny’s dad sent the letters in batches because if Lenny just got one letter at a time he would feel more sad about the war.

This is a three-plus week Writing Root using The Lion and the Unicorn by Shirley Hughes, where children explore the text in its historical context and discuss the themes and imagery within, e.g. the Blitz and evacuees. They explore a range of grammatical concepts including dialogue to create inference about a character, a variety of noun phrases to create description, character comparisons using conjunctions, personification and prepositions to describe a setting. Children write a range of diary entries, letters, character comparisons, setting descriptions and finish by writing their own evacuation narrative. There is also an optional additional opportunity to write a non-chronological report about women in World War 2 (WW2), as well as two optional additional spelling sessions. Synopsis of Text: Lenny felt numb” means that he could not feel anything. I think he felt that way because he thought that Joyce made Winnie cry. This is a three-session spelling seed for the book The Lion and the Unicorn by Shirley Hughes. Below is the coverage from Appendix 1 of the National Curriculum 2014. List other stories, books and films that have lions and / or unicorns in them. What are the similarities and differences between them in this story and others? She could create a sense of drama out of the smallest thing and resolve it without ever needing to deliver a message. Instead, she relied on children and their parents being largely sensible and so able to solve problems for themselves.

Then, Lenny himself must go away, evacuated from his home and family to escape the bombing. Staying in a strange new place, Lenny gathers all his lion bravery, all his unicorn courage, and discovers that magic can happen, even in the most desperate of times. Teaching Ideas and Resources: EnglishI find this book rather good because it explains the pain of children who leave their parents. Even though this book is for children between 5 and 7 years old, but it's also interesting even for older children. This book is not full of action but it makes you want to help children who have lived through the war and nowadays find it difficult to live without their parents. I think the place is London and I think the image is from World War Two (WWⅡ). I think the place is London because the rhyme said “London’s burning”. I think think the image is from World War Two (WWⅡ) because image had a lot of fire in it and that the rhyme said that there were enemy planes flying over London. Sort characters in the book depending on their attitude to Lenny. Who is kind to him? Who is unkind? In addition to her own work, Shirley battled hard for the cause of illustrators and authors, serving on the management committees of the Society of Authors, Public Lending Right and the Library and Information Services Council.

Spelling Seeds have been designed to complement Writing Roots by providing weekly, contextualised sequences of sessions for the teaching of spelling that include open-ended investigations and opportunities to practise and apply within meaningful and purposeful contexts, linked (where relevant) to other areas of the curriculum and a suggestion of how to extend the investigation into home learning. Make a collection of books about World War II, for example, When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr and War Boy by Michael Foreman. Look at famous paintings of fires in London, for example, The Great Fire of London (Unknown artist 1675) or A House Collapsing on Two Firemen by Leonard Rosoman. Have a go at your own fire painting.In 1952 she married John Vulliamy; he died in 2007. She is survived by their three children, Ed, a journalist, Clara, an author and illustrator, and Tom, a research scientist. Look at these pictures, which blend wartime images of London during the Blitz with images of the modern city. Discuss the impact of the bombing. Shirley began to write and draw her own picture books when her children were young. Her first book - Lucy and Tom's Day - was published in 1960, and she followed it with, among others, Dogger, and the Alfie series. Her books include the wordless picture book Up and Up, collection of rhymes and poems Out and About, and for the very young The Nursery Collection. Make a collection of words that could be used to describe the lion and the unicorn. Use a thesaurus to find appropriate synonyms. She then studied at the Ruskin in Oxford. According to her autobiography, A Life Drawing (2002), her application to Oxford was based on the misinformation that the city had an ice rink and she “rather fancied myself on ice”. At Ruskin, she studied life drawing, laying the foundation for so much of her later illustrations.