Interest Age 7-10 The rats of Meadowsweet Farm are a pretty ugly lot, but their leader, the King Rat, is gruesome. He’s as big as a small dog and twice as vicious. The farmer is revolting in a different way – he only has a bath when there’s an h in the month. When the farmer ambushes a posse of rats on top of the rubbish heap, which sits in the middle of the farmyard ‘like a huge plum cake’, King Rat declares war. Dick King-Smith skilfully packs a big adventure into a short book and the illustrations by the renowned Victor Ambrus, black and white and colour, make the rats both menacing and comic. Specially adapted by Barrington Stoke to be accessible to all children, including those with dyslexia, this is a true little gem. ~Andrea Reece
About the Little Gems series: Little Gems are in a gorgeous new chunky format, with high-spec production including coloured endpapers and jacketed flaps with activities. Additional features include high quality cream paper, Barrington Stoke font and illustrations on every page. They are perfect for 5-8's. These quality stories promote good reading practice for all newly independent readers.
Animal Farm meets Shaun the Sheep in this darkly funny story from award-winning Dick King-Smith with full colour artwork. Life on Meadowsweet Farm has always had a balance - Farmer Green turns a blind eye to the messiness of his farm and the rats run the show, glorying in the muck and the mire. Well, one rat in particular - Ripper the King Rat. But one day things turn upside down when Farmer Green kills some of Ripper's best men. Now the rats are out for revenge...
High quality cream paper and a special easy-to-read font ensure a smooth read for all.
Dick King-Smith was born in 1922 and brought up in Gloucestershire.
Dick served with the Grenadier Guards during World War II and was mentioned in dispatches. He then spent twenty years working as a farmer and a short period teaching in a primary school before becoming a full-time writer.
Dick wrote over seventy stories, many of which have animal characters for the simple reason that, "I like them, I've always kept a lot of pets, and because it's fun putting words in their mouths." His farming years were the inspiration for many of his books, and pigs have featured in several of them because they are his favourite animal. Dick won the 1984 Guardian Fiction Award for The Sheep-Pig, which was later turned into an Oscar-winning film, 'Babe'. He died in 2011.
