The Iron Man - Ted Hughes

Is this piffle still required reading in our primary schools? If the answer is positive, then we must take the Lord's name in vain. Yes, even you, Jeffrey Archer, could probably create a better "original fable" than this tosh. The Iron Man is a book that theediscerning read a lot of when young, but finding it in a charity shop the other day for 10p was the only reason he picked it up for a return visit for the first time since way-back-when. As it is the first time he has been able to put such a discerning eye to it since then, it is disturbing to find that it is complete bunkum. Reading it after such a remove, it is surprising ...  Read the complete review

A week ago I settled down with the children on the sofa with a bag of pick and mix and high hopes. The credits rolled and we watched with eager anticipation for the first scenes of Ted Hughes ‘The Iron Man’. What followed could surely only be loosely termed as being based on the book, there were so many differences that it seemed a travesty . We watched a thoroughly entertaining film, great characters, excellent cartoon art, good dialogue and a happy ending but it was still galling to me that it was so far removed from the work of the fantastic Ted Hughes. In a nutshell the film concentrated on the friendship that grows up between a giant Iron ...  Read the complete review

An Iron Giant, who has had to reconstruct itself, travels through the ocean to a small farming community and eats metal objects until a boy named Hogarth manages to trap him in a pit. After the iron giant escapes, Hogarth befriends him and takes him to a junkyard to eat happily until a giant space dragon, who eats living things but cannot be destroyed by humans, arrives and must be defeated by the iron giant. This was my favourite book as a child, it is a great story, engaging for a young reader and also quite scary, well I at least found the big dragon monster quite scary! Age wise I would say it is suited to 5 - 10 year olds. Ted Hughes published ...  Read the complete review

This is the first book I remember reading, I am sure I read some books before things like ‘Bill had a ball, Bill had a big ball, Bill had a big red ball, Bill had a friend called Jill, Bill and Jill……’ and so on and so forth. But this is the first book that I am happy to call a proper book that I read (proper meaning that the words outnumbered the pictures) Enough of all this and lets get on the book it set out in two main sections first one mainly about the Iron Man the second about something far worse. Written by Ted Hughes is about a mysterious figure that appears one night at the top of a ...  Read the complete review