Reading Champion: The Ants and the Grasshopper

In this retelling of an Aesop fable, Grasshopper is too busy having fun in the summer sunshine to collect food for the winter. The ants warn him that he needs to prepare for the cold weather, but he doesn't listen...This story is part of Reading Champion, a series carefully linked to book bands to encourage independent reading skills, developed with Dr Sue Bodman and Glen Franklin of UCL Institute of Education (IOE)Reading Champion offers independent reading books for children to practise and reinforce their developing reading skills.Fantastic stories are accompanied by engaging artwork and a reading activity. Each book has been carefully graded so that it can be matched to a child's reading ability, encouraging reading for pleasure.

Jackie Walter has written and edited many books for children. She never gets tired of listening to and telling a good story. Jackie lives in Cornwall with her husband and young daughters. Angelika is an illustrator based in South London. She always loved drawing, and her earliest memory is drawing with her dad. She was obsessed with Beatrix Potter with her beautiful illustrations of cute, fluffy bunnies and animals as a child. Ever since she can remember, she always wanted to have the exact studio Beatrix had with her bunny sitting on her desk! Everywhere she goes, she carries around a sketchbook and jots down every idea that comes to her head. Before she became an illustrator, she taught yoga to young children, making up innovative stories through yoga. This was what later inspired her to illustrate children's books. Creating cute, fun characters is what she loves about illustrating.