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DearReader, Welcome to Vampires, Elephants and Aliens. This anthology is filled with a wide range of interesting fiction, poetry and non-fiction pieces. We hope you have as much fun reading this selection, as we had in putting it together.


The fiction includes extracts from lots of different kinds of stories: funny ones, sad ones, historical stories, fantasies, mysteries, as well as graphic novels and classics. We hope that if you really like an author or a story you will go on to read the entire novel and find other titles in that genre or by the same author.


Within the non-fiction, there is a variety of pieces, from information to interviews to puzzles. You can read about topics that link up with some of the fiction themes. For example, after an historical fiction story there may be a factual piece that shows you what life was really like during that period. Then there are pieces relating to the kinds of reading you may have to do in order to locate information or to complete a task e.g. how to read a timetable or a recipe. These pieces have lots of photographs, tables, maps and headings to help you learn about the topic.


As well as introducing you to a range of genres, this book is designed to help you boost your reading skills and develop the strategies that good readers use. There are ‘before reading’, ‘during reading’ and ‘after reading’ questions or prompts to help you along the way. Let’s take a look at some of these special features.


Beforereading: Think of this as a warm-up activity for reading. It is about getting your mind ready to read the text. We may ask you to make predictions about what you imagine the text will be about by checking the title, examining the artwork or photographs, scanning and reading headings, or considering what you already know about the topic or the author’s style of writing.


Duringreading: Notice the little stars on the page. These are a signal to you to check out the prompt or question in the coloured box at the end of the page before you read on. It is also a signal to slow down your reading and to ponder this important element of the story. We might ask you to notice how the author creates a mood or how a character is feeling or why they reacted to a particular event in the story.

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