Although the book is full of beautiful (sometimes scary) illustrations and visual descriptions, I thought it was a very difficult story for young children to make sense of.

The Bear Under the Stairs is an entertaining, suspenseful, and amusing story that toddlers will certainly enjoy and ask for again. For any child with fears of dark places in your own home, this book might help them to see that their fears are all in their imagination.This is a three-week Writing Root in which children will look at the book The Bear Under the Stairs and use it as a model to discuss their fears and how they deal with them. The repetitive language ‘wham, bang, thump’ is also a fun way to encourage children to join in with the reading. Spelling Seeds have been designed to complement Writing Roots by providing weekly, contextualised sequences of sessions for the teaching of spelling that include open-ended investigations and opportunities to practise and apply within meaningful and purposeful contexts, linked (where relevant) to other areas of the curriculum and a suggestion of how to extend the investigation into home learning.

This is what the story builds up for the audience to believe but then we are contradicted once again and the existence of the bear is confirmed.It’s a chronological narrative using lots of alliteration, rhythm and rhyme – it’s really a poetry book as well as a story. However, in using it with youth, I didn't want there to be crayon marks and tears on the pages as some of the reviews noted. e. the name of the various food and fruits that William feeds the bear) is easy to teach with the use of this text.

It would make a lovely book to be read at storytime as there is opportunity for lots of conversation and discussion about the ending of the book. The rhyming is fun and the illustrations adorable, definitely a book that I'll be reading to my own children in the future. It tells the story of William and how he copes with and finally confronts his fear of bears and dark spaces.

Since I was not going to use the book on a daily basis, I did not feel that I needed to spend a lot of money for a new book. She was born in 1963 and grew up in the far North of England in a very rural area where milk came from the farm in a can, bears lived under the stairs, and it rained a great deal.