Teaching Resource for The Last Wild

Marina Ekkel has prepared 6 worksheets for The Last Wild by Piers Torday, downloadable in PDF.

A disease called the ‘red eye’ has caused all animals to begin to fade into extinction. A single corporation runs the world, and is bent on confining the human population to cities. And twelve year old Kester Jaynes cannot speak (at least to humans).

Forced away from his family, Kester is locked away in a facility for troubled youth. There he discovers that he can speak, but only to animals. With the help of a flock of pigeons and a cockroach, Kester escapes the facility.

The animals bring him to their group in the wild and implore Kester to help them find a cure for the red eye. Kester agrees to help and begins a journey to find his missing father (a famous veterinarian) and a cure for the red eye.

The Last Wild is a fast paced adventure novel that deals with themes such as friendship, promise keeping, corporate power, and animal endangerment. The book is recommended for year 5 and year 6, but could be read by advanced readers in year 4. All worksheets and exercises are based on the U.K year 5 and year 6 curriculum. There are 6 worksheets in total each reflecting a different part (or chapter) of the book. Please adjust as you see fit for your own classroom.

Happy Teaching!

Worksheet 1 – Reading Comprehension exercise [PDF download]

Worksheet 2 – The Wolves [PDF download]

Worksheet 3 – The Red Eye [PDF download]

Worksheet 4 – Friendship and Promise Keeping [PDF download]

Worksheet 5 – Foraging [PDF download]

Worksheet 6 – The Stag [PDF download]

You can find other teaching resources created for our authors’ books here, including a water use quiz based around The Memory of Water and a discussion guide on science and politics in The Stone Weta.

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Published by Lauren James

Lauren James is the Carnegie-longlisted British author of many Young Adult novels, including Green Rising, The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker and The Loneliest Girl in the Universe. She is a RLF Royal Fellow, freelance editor and screenwriter. Lauren is the founder of the Climate Fiction Writers League, and on the board of the Authors & Illustrators Sustainability Working Group through the Society of Authors. Her books have sold over a hundred thousand copies worldwide and been translated into six languages. The Quiet at the End of the World was shortlisted for the YA Book Prize and STEAM Children’s Book Award. Her other novels include The Next Together series, the dyslexia-friendly novella series The Watchmaker and the Duke and serialised online novel An Unauthorised Fan Treatise. She was born in 1992, and has a Masters degree from the University of Nottingham, where she studied Chemistry and Physics. Lauren is a passionate advocate of STEM further education, and many of her books feature female scientists in prominent roles. She sold the rights to her first novel when she was 21, whilst she was still at university. Her writing has been described as ‘gripping romantic sci-fi’ by the Wall Street Journal and ‘a strange, witty, compulsively unpredictable read which blows most of its new YA-suspense brethren out of the water’ by Entertainment Weekly. Lauren lives in the West Midlands and is an Arts Council grant recipient. She has written articles for numerous publications, including the Guardian, Buzzfeed, Den of Geek, The Toast, and the Children’s Writers and Artist’s Yearbook 2022. She has taught creative writing for Coventry University, WriteMentor, and Writing West Midlands.

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