Here’s the guidance and resource materials for teachers, librarians, parents and others who work with children for Episode Five of The Story Thief Challenges.

Story Re-cap questions for children:

1. How do you think the second Story Challenge from the Story Thief got into Liam’s bedroom?
2. Why didn’t Liam and Aoife have lots of time to invent their characters that day?
3. What happened during the car journey home after the blitz?
4. What was their Dad scared of at the end of the episode?
5. Why is it so important that Liam and Aoife successfully complete the Story Challenges?

Writing advice Re-cap questions:

1. Why is it important that the character in a story seems real to the author?
2. How can inventing names help you invent characters?
3. Why does Kieran make every character, even the most minor ones, not think of themselves as sidekicks?
4. What example did Kieran give of how imagining a situation that can help a writer discover his character’s personality?
5. What are some of the emotions that humans and characters in stories should have in common?

Story Challenge:

P.S. I have a Story Challenge for you. Try to come up with a funny or cool or weird name. Or draw a picture of a really interesting looking person (or monster or animal or whatever you want) then write out a paragraph or two that describes the personality of the great character you’ve just created. 

How to do this challenge?

Obviously this Story Challenge is all about helping the child (or children) that you’re working with think about the process of developing a character as distinct from just telling a story.

You could start this by having your kids share with each other their favorite characters in books. Lead them into a discussion about what they think makes for a great character.

Of course, you don’t have to do the challenge exactly as outlined in the question:

• For example, you could have kids develop the character as a jumping off point for writing a story.
• Or you could bring in a magazine or newspaper clippings with photos of unknown people and have them invent characters based on the photos.
• Or you have every child in the group think of a character in their heads and draw him or her. Next get them to swap around all the drawings and then each invent characters based on someone else’s image. Now compare the different characters that kids came up with for the same image.

Once the challenge is completed?

As ever we’d love to see what your kids came up with and show it to all our readers on the kids’ work pages.  Please get in touch on our contact page!