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On the Way Home

Book Synopsis

Filled with a little girl’s inventive stories, On the Way Home is by Jill Murphy, the author and illustrator of the bestselling Peace at Last and Whatever Next!

Claire has hurt her knee so she sets off home to tell her mum all about it. On the way she meets her friends and tells them how the fall happened. But just how did it happen . . .? Was she dropped by a wolf, a slithering snake, an enormous dragon or a hairy gorilla?!

On the Way Home is a fantastic journey of the imagination that every small child who tells the occasional tall tale will relate to! A bestselling classic that has been delighting readers for forty years.

Our Review Panel says...

This is a classic children’s picturebook by Jill Murphy, also known for the Large Family books and the Worst Witch.

Claire’s knee is hurt and raises concern from those she meets on the way home. Flexing her imaginative muscles, Claire offers each friend a different unlikely tale about what happened to her bad knee – from big bad wolves and feisty dragons to hairy gorillas and sneaky snakes.  Reaching the safety of a loving Mum at home, Claire reveals the truth and enjoys some much-needed TLC.

This is the kind of book that gives natural opportunities for imagining extra scenarios to add to Claire’s tall stories about what happened to her knee. The ending is satisfying and we as readers know all along that the kind of attention Claire needs is not the kind that comes from inventing dramatic tales but the good old fashioned attention of a loving carer.

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