Hodder Literature: a new and exciting series of literature titles for Key Stage 3 for whole class use.

When a move to a new house coincides with his baby sister's illness, Michael's world seems suddenly lonely and uncertain. Then, one Sunday afternoon, he stumbles into the old, ramshackle garage of his new home, and finds something magical. A strange creature - part owl, part angel, a being who needs Michael's help if he is to survive - Skellig. With his new friend Mina, Michael nourishes Skellig back to health, while his baby sister languishes in the hospital. But Skellig is far more than he at first appears, and as he helps Michael breathe life into his tiny sister, Michael's world changes forever.

This book is part of a book series called Hodder Literature .

This book is suitable for Key Stage 3. KS3 covers school years 7, 8 and 9, and ages 12-14 years. A key stage is any of the fixed stages into which the national curriculum is divided, each having its own prescribed course of study. At the end of each stage, pupils are required to complete standard assessment tasks. This book is aimed at children in secondary school. This book is part of a reading scheme, meaning that it is a book aimed at children who are learning to read. This reading book uses the phonics method. This approach concentrates on teaching children how to map between sounds and spellings, allowing them to decode written words into their constituent sounds. Phonics skill thus involves being able to split the written word 'cat' into the phonemes /k/, /a/, /t/, and to map from letter 'c' to phoneme /k/, from letter 'a' to phoneme /ae/ and from letter 't' to phoneme /t/. Decoding skill is useful when reading unfamiliar words which use regular spelling sequences.

There are 176 pages in this book. This book was published 2005 by Hodder Education .

David Almond has written many award-winning books including 'The Fire-Eaters', 'Skellig' and 'Kit's Wilderness'. He has won the Gold Smarties Award and the Carnegie Medal.

This book has the following chapters:

• : Chapters One to Forty-Six