The Abominables: 1

Product Information

The yeti leaned forward. He blew softly with his lower lip to clear away his hair—and then Lady Agatha Farlingham became the first human ever to see a yeti’s face. Annotate your picture using words from the text to i) describe their appearance and ii) describe their personalities. Best of all are their smiles. “Before I had seen a yeti smile,” Lady Agatha would later say, “I didn’t know what a smile was.” Not only was the yeti’s smile beautiful, it was very, very comforting to anyone who might be worrying about being eaten. If you want to know what a person eats, look at his teeth. The yeti’s teeth were white and even and quite flat, like the teeth of a very clean sheep, and Agatha understood immediately not only that the yeti wouldn’t eat her but that he couldn’t eat her. And in fact, as she found out later, yetis are the strictest and most careful vegetarians. The Abominables is the sweetest, funniest and most moral of stories...This funny book will make children laugh aloud and read it over and over again for its kindness and humour. For older readers, it presents an unavoidable parallel with the inhuman treatment shown to the Yetis and the cruelty shown to so many vulnerable and persecuted people today. This extra layer of meaning will ensure that as readers grow older, they will return again and again to The Abominables and take from it more and more. --Armadillo Magazine

If you have been looking for a perfect chapter book for a relatively new reader, this would be a wonderful choice. The illustrations are great, but the story stole my heart. The writing is skillful, precise, and frequently funny, and it offers an effective counterbalance to some of the story’s more serious social criticism..."

About the Book

Ibottson began writing with the television drama 'Linda Came Today', in 1965. Ten years later, she published her first novel, The Great Ghost Rescue. Ibbotson has written numerous books including The Secret of Platform 13, Journey to the River Sea, Which Witch?, Island of the Aunts, and Dial-a-Ghost. She won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize for Journey to the River Sea, and has been a runner up for many of major awards for British children's literature.

Imagine that you are Agatha. Write a diary entry from the day when she tells the Yetis that they must stay safely hidden.The novel is full of whimsy, charm, and sly humor. The yetis will tug at readers’ heartstrings and make them laugh. The writing is lean, witty, and subtle. Ibbotson manages to touch on ethical messages of human rights, advocacy, and environmentalism without being obvious." Draw a picture of all of the Yetis and name them. What do you think they all might look like? Think about size and any characteristics that you can gather from the text, e.g. Yetis have snubnoses. She looked around. The air was warm, and she saw trees covered in red and white and cream blossoms as big as plates. There was a stream, crystal clear and bubbly, with kingfishers darting about its banks. Far above her an eagle circled lazily. She was in a broad valley, surrounded on every side by sheer, jagged cliffs and escarpments. Then to her surprise, beyond the steep ridges that surrounded the valley, she saw the unmistakable outline of the peak of Nanvi Dar, glittering white in the early-morning sun. A beautiful young girl called Lady Agatha Farlingham was sleeping peacefully in a tent pitched on a ledge below the summit of a mountain known as Nanvi Dar. Beside her, wearing a green woolly nightcap against the bitter cold, slept her father, the Earl of Farley, and in another tent close by slept their three porters, tough natives of the Himalayas, who carried their baggage and looked after them. Charmingly illustrated...this book will have you smiling before the first chapter's end --Newcastle Journal