TR&W Issue 20

20 | www.teachwire.net She’s missing her father more than ever as he’s out of the country for work. But Zo has a plan: she’ll pretend to be lost in the forest so that her dad comes to find her. Her strategy soon backfires though, and she finds herself in the forest being chased by robotic gnats, smart-mouthed Anansi spiders and a dinosaur-like creature she calls the Flesh-skinner. Now, Zo has to figure out how to survive and get back to her family. On the way, she rescues a boy, Adri Khan, who is in Trinidad from New York to celebrate his mother’s cancer remission. Adri has no memory of the weeks he and his parents have been missing from the village since their boat capsized at sea. When Zo discovers she has the ability to fall into Adri’s memories through touch, she hides it, not sure what his mind can handle. But is Adri actually the one keeping secrets? After all, he has a broken key card for the abandoned research centre somewhere in the hills. The centre – a place locals called ‘the Zoo’ – was run by a secretive council who carried out experiments on animals... and maybe even humans. Adri thinks his parents are still in the centre and wants to find them. Zo just wants to get out. As Zo and Adri fight to escape the Flesh-skinner, the insect-like X, and Yara, a powerful shapeshifter with secrets of her own, they must decide if they can trust each other and work together, to find their way back home. Z o and the Forest of Secrets is an exciting fantasy adventure set in the lush natural landscape of the Caribbean island of Trinidad. It’s ideal for readers aged nine and up who are fans of Katherine Rundell’s The Explorer or the Percy Jackson series. The story features two children with different secrets who work together to battle strange creatures and dangerous adults who are after them and their gifts. The heroine, Zo Joseph is stuck at a remote seaside village. She’s been forced to move there from the city with her mother’s new family, after her parents’ divorce. Zo and the Forest of Secrets by Alake Pilgrim WAGOLL Zo and the Invisible Island, the sequel to Zo and the Forest of Secrets is out now. DOWNLOAD RESOURCES AT Download your FREE , exclusive teaching pack to help you explore both this extract and the rest of the book with your class. tinyurl.com/ tp-ZoWAGOLL PUT YOURSELF IN YOUR CHARACTER’S BODY What physical reactions are they having to being chased? How do these reactions change as the chase continues? USE THE FIVE SENSES What is your character seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching (or being touched by) on the chase? CREATE STAGES Think of the chase as having different stages. Have something change and become more intense in each stage: whether in the setting, events and actions, or your character’s feelings and reactions. ADD OBSTACLES AND SURPRISES In addition to what’s chasing them, what other challenges, blocks, surprises, or twists does your character face as they’re trying to get away? PLAY WITH HOPE Allow your character to have moments in the chase where things seem hopeful and they have near misses and near escapes, followed by events becoming more intense or taking a surprising turn. This will increase our sense of tension as readers. Peer inside the mind of the author, and help pupils understand how to write a breathless chase scene FIVE TIPS FORWRITING A FIRST-PERSON CHASE SCENE