The best thing to do was, as I insist on telling my students, look at the text. So that is what I did. Using crayons and a large sheet of paper your child could draw their own monster, encourage them to talk to you about their picture. Is this a real monster, or is it Bernard behaving like a monster because his parents keep ignoring him? by his parents ignoring him. This is where the child reader recognises himself or herself and finds comfort in the book. It is a book that holds the infant monster-hand and says 'here's your teddy, here's your milk, go to bed.'

Then there is that other monster, the one that has become such a fixture in the garden that even the opposition seems not to notice it any more. Can we talk about Brexit? Not now, Bernard! If the monster, though, has eaten Bernard up metaphorically, then the mother is still ignoring her son who is now behaving like a monster by roaring at her. In other words, she knows it’s Bernard being a monster again. public Wi-Fi - this extends to the majority of our public spaces including the Reading Rooms, as well as our study desks and galleries at St Pancras (you won't require a login)Before long, Bernard (played by Rhys Rusbatch) pokes his head out and squeezes through the screens. And in under a minute, he has the kids on side with a talking shoe routine and some splendid face-pulling. What he also conveys within seconds is that sense of boredom that manages to somehow take over a child's entire body, so that every lollop and sigh they make suggests they will soon explode with frustration. using ICT the children might design their own monster and give him/ her a story using the paint programme

I've read and enjoyed this many times, albeit not recently. The story and illustrations are good, funny, and, at first, relatable, with echoes of The Boy who Cried 'Wolf'. The parents are always too busy to pay much attention to their son. It was written in 1980, long before smartphones and social media. welcomes this fate. ('A book about suicide for kids.') He knows the monster will eat him and he goes to If this is a real monster the mother is showing how she ignores absolutely everyone, even a roaring monster. Write a story that explains what happens next. How do Bernard’s family react when they realise what has happened? Conservative readiness to indulge Johnson is no measure of his reputation in the country, but the leadership contest is not a national election. For at least one more week, British politics is contained in that sealed chamber where there is a Boris legacy to celebrate, where the solution to poverty is corporate tax cuts, where the solution to everything is tax cuts, where tax cuts have no impact on public service budgets, where life outside the EU is all upside and can only get better.

As soon as I read this I was thrown into doubt. You mean the monster’s not real ? You mean that for all those years I have been getting it wrong? You mean the whole thing’s some kind of metaphor?