Caution! Hodgehegs Crossing!
Published on Wednesday, June 19th, 2019
We all know that roads can be dangerous places, for human beings as well as animals. Anyone who has read Dick’s book The Hodgeheg will remember that Max the hedgehog has a very hard time crossing the busy road in order to reach the park on the other side. Luckily the Department for Transport has […]
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Teacher Resources
Published on Tuesday, May 28th, 2019
Dear primary school teachers, Did you know that tucked away at the bottom of every page of this website there is a teacher resources page? On it, you can find some (hopefully) useful notes on reading aloud to children and specific notes covering some of Dick’s titles, including the brand-new and comprehensive notes for The […]
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All Around The World
Published on Friday, May 10th, 2019
Amazingly, Dick’s books have been published in at least 15 languages, so that children from many different places around the world can read them. Can you guess which book titles these are, and what language they have been translated into?
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Looks Can Be Deceiving…
Published on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019
When Dick was a farmer, his normal farm vehicle was a second-hand Land Rover, but for a period during the 1950s he owned an old, custard-coloured, ex-baker’s van, which he regularly used for transporting livestock. On one occasion, he was taking a favourite nanny goat to be mated. Rachel, a noble animal with a patrician […]
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Dick’s Birthday
Published on Wednesday, March 27th, 2019
Dick King-Smith was born on the 27th March 1922. That is exactly 97 years ago today! Although Dick died in 2011, in an almost magical way, it feels as though a small part of him lives on through the stories he wrote. The fact that to this day, many, many children from around the world […]
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Pets For Keeps
Published on Wednesday, March 20th, 2019
Over the years, Dick had hundreds of pets of all different sorts. From budgerigars to mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, rats, tortoises, cats and dogs and many more. He also had lots of farm animals during his twenty years as a farmer, and these included cows, goats, hens, ducks, pheasants and of course, pigs! As most […]
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Dick King-Smith, My Dad
Published on Monday, March 4th, 2019
Every so often I get a little bit of reflected glory, when someone connects my surname with the man who wrote “The Sheep-Pig” and found fame when it was made into the delightful film “Babe”. Of course, that isn’t quite the full story: my father, Dick King-Smith, wrote over 100 books – starting in 1977 […]
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Storytelling Week
Published on Wednesday, January 30th, 2019
Wishing everyone a happy Storytelling Week. Reading stories aloud to children is a fantastic activity, with many benefits for the child and the reader. These benefits include helping children acquire early language skills, enabling them to develop a positive association between books and pleasure and building a solid foundation for school and later success. It […]
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Dick’s TV Career
Published on Friday, January 25th, 2019
During the 1980’s and 1990’s, Dick was lucky enough to present several children’s television shows, including one called Rub a Dub Tub, one called Pob’s Programme and one called Tumbledown Farm. In all three programmes, Dick would meet lots of different animals, accompanied by this faithful Dachshund Dodo, or his brother Tony’s lovely black Labrador […]
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Dick’s First Book
Published on Thursday, January 10th, 2019
Many years ago, in 1976, when Dick was 54 years old, he started to write his first story for children, The Fox Busters. It was based on his experience of being a farmer twenty years earlier, when one day a daring fox had attacked and killed in broad daylight some fine white cockerels that Dick […]
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