Hairy Horror

Anna loves her new home, but if there's one thing she doesn't like, it's the scary basement her step-brother, Hal, lives in. Hal is a genius, and one day Anna discovers the top secret special project he's been working on: an enormous hairy spider called Tula! Anna is absolutely terrified - can she ever learn to live with a ginormous monster tarantula lurking in the house?

The second brilliant book in the Jack Beechwhistle series. The world's a dangerous place. Luckily, Jack Beechwhistle is around to protect it. He might look like an ordinary boy, but really he's a junior secret agent. He's tackled all sorts of missions - exploding conkers, zombie sweet-shop owners, and man-eating giant slugs - with a bit of help from his best friends and sidekicks, Colin and Harry (as long as it's not past their bedtime). Then Jack notices something strange and suspicious about the hairdresser in town, Valentino. Every time Valentino cuts someone's hair, he sweeps the hairs up and collects them in a big plastic bag. But what is he using them for? Everything points to Valentino being an evil enemy agent! And Jack Beechwhistle's on the case . . .

Luke Thorpe is a fifteen - year - old wimp. Excellent at maths and terrible at sport, he'd rather keep his head down and get on with his schoolwork. Yet, mysterious and uncontrollable changes in his behaviour and appearance - patches of hair growing rapidly, howling rather than singing the hymns in assembly, sudden growth spurts causing his clothes to rip off - are threatening to rocket him out of obscurity. Join Luke on a journey of discovery, embarrassing mishaps and hilarity as he gets to the bottom of his werewolf roots, joins a pack, and finds himself en route to war against the vampires (whose number include a rather wimpy, but familiar face)...

Read at Home is a new series designed for young, beginner readers. It features all the popular Oxford Reading Tree characters in 18 exciting stories specially written for parents to support their children's reading at home. These entertaining stories, with real life and fantasy adventures, arenow carefully graded across 5 levels, and contain vocabulary repetition and gradual progression within each level, from Book A to Book C.Hairy-Scary Monster, based on the Boy who cried Wolf story, is Level 5a for children Reading with Confidence - those children who can recognize 75+ words by signt, can read with less support and who can read silently and read ahead. The story has 4-6 sentences per page.Approx ORT level: Stage 6-7

Two boys attempt to persuade a cousin to remain quiet about a secret chemistry set by mixing a startling potion that unexpectedly grows hair on their faces and makes the dog hairless.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Vintage Anne Rice—a lushly written, gothic … metaphysical tale. This time, with werewolves.” —The Wall Street Journal When Reuben Golding, a young reporter on assignment, arrives at a secluded mansion on a bluff high above the Pacific, it’s at the behest of the home’s enigmatic female owner. She quickly seduces him, but their idyllic night is shattered by violence when the man is inexplicably attacked—bitten—by a beast he cannot see in the rural darkness. It will set in motion a terrifying yet seductive transformation that will propel Reuben into a mysterious new world and raise profound questions. Why has he been given the wolf gift? What is its true nature—good or evil? And are there others out there like him?

Stink’s spider phobia spurs his sister, Judy, and friend Webster to try some desensitization techniques—until a real-life encounter takes them by surprise—in a hilarious episode offering a bonus origami activity. Creepy! Crawly! Criminy! Everyone knows that Stink is bonkers about most scientific things. But there’s one exception: dangle a spider in front of him and he goes berserk! Stink is so freaked out by spiders that he can’t read about them. He can’t look at them. He can’t think about them. And he for-sure can’t touch them! Stink has arachnophobia (a fear of spiders), and he has it bad. But when a hairy backyard emergency arises, Stink is forced to face his fear—and eight beady eyes—head-on. Will he manage to tame the heebie-jeebies, or will he remain stuck in his web of terror? Arachno-fans will love the comics sprinkled throughout with facts about spiders as well as a hands-on origami challenge.

When the spacebin lands on a strange planet where hamsters have developed into the dominant life form, Harry and Colin are in for another adventure. Unfortunately, the boys are captured by the humongous hamster hosts during a sightseeing trip to the Great Wheel of the Andromeda Galaxy. Harry and Colin are imprisoned as the school pets, bundled into a human-sized cage and forced to run on a giant wheel. Things go from bad to worse when the school's laziest hamster is charged with looking after Harry and Colin for the holidays. Will the adventurers find a way to escape from their hamster hell? This book is the third installment in the Cosmic Colin saga.