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Sophie Kirtley

Find out what it was like to write an exciting time slip story set in the Stone Age with Sophie Kirtley

About The Author:

Sophie grew up in Northern Ireland, where she spent her childhood climbing on hay bales, rolling down sand dunes and leaping the raw Atlantic waves. Nowadays she lives in Wiltshire with her husband, three children and their mini-menagerie of pets and wild things. Sophie has always loved poems and stories: she taught English in secondary schools for many years and has worked in a theatre, a bookshop and a tiny pub where folk tell fairytales by candlelight. Sophie is a prize-winning poet and children’s author; her first book, The Wild Way Home, was shortlisted for the Joan Aiken Future Classics Prize.

 

About The Book:

When Charlie's longed-for brother is born with a serious heart condition, Charlie's world is turned upside down. Upset and afraid, Charlie flees the hospital and makes for the ancient forest on the edge of town. There Charlie finds a boy floating face-down in the stream, injured, but alive. But when Charlie sets off back to the hospital to fetch help, it seems the forest has changed. It's become a place as strange and wild as the boy dressed in deerskins. For Charlie has unwittingly fled into the Stone Age, with no way to help the boy or return to the present day. Or is there? What follows is a wild, big-hearted adventure as Charlie and the Stone Age boy set out together to find what they have lost - their courage, their hope, their family and their way home.

 

 

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An Introduction to 'The Wild Way Home'

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The Inspiration behind 'The Wild Way Home'

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A Reading from 'The Wild Way Home'

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Sophie's Writing Challenge

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Why did you start the story with a 'Before' section?

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How did you create immediacy in the story?

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How did you approach writing the time-travelling scene?

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Was it difficult to write a story set in the Stone Age?

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How important was it for the story to be historically accurate?

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What are some of the main themes in the book?

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Why did you want Charlie and Harby to communicate differently?

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Is Charlie a boy or a girl?

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Resource Download: 'The Wild Way Home' Extract