Reception and Year One readers- Ghost by Luk Depondt and Guido Van Genechten

There's nothing as good as a spooky book for encouraging young readers to delve into reading. Something about ghostly going-ons is naturally exciting for Primary aged children, and this wonderful book provides a fun reading experience.

"Ghost" is beautifully illustrated. The giant pages are full of large, simple cartoons which are amusing and clearly defined. There are so many styles and methods of illustrating picture books, and the paintings used here work well, and will provoke the interest of young readers.

The story is fairly simple- the young ghost tells the reader that 'if he were a ghost he'd...' which provides a good template for creative writing. Each ghostly activity is accompanied by a wonderful painted illustration which helps the reader to form an image of the sentence. This means that the book is very useful in helping children to develop their decoding skills; for instance, "I'd go "Boo" at the kids in the park" is illustrated thus:


With the ghost (and his bat) swooping in from the corner of the page, and the children running off the bottom and far right of the page, the meaning is clear. A less certain reader will be able to understand the meaning of the words from the image, and perhaps even raise a question as to why there is one boy not running away; so, the simple logic to this enjoyable book helps to build reading skills.

This big, colourful, enjoyable book could easily become a firm favourite of any young reader. It's a fine book to read with Reception and Year One classes, as the large pages and pictures mean it's easy to share with a class. Parents may also like this book too, as it's easy and fun to read with a child, and a good pick for a Halloween present.

Above: aaw, cute ghosts!

FREE RESOURCE: Guido Van Genechten has a website with a page of free colouring sheets to download (pdfs), all similar to the style he uses here- CLICK HERE