In this popular series, the published Book for Keeps review of A Visit to City Farm is combined with a summary of the key themes in the book, some teaching ideas, and connections to other stories that teachers may find useful.

This Key Stage Two and Three teaching resource is premised on the concept that how we read is as important as what we read. Young people today live in a world where they are bombarded by print and non-print texts, all of which implicitly or explicitly present perspectives on race, gender, class, as well as many social, political and economic issues. This resource draws on Freebody and Luke’s Four Resources Model (1990) to teach children and young people not to uncritically conform in their personal lives, but at a societal level as well. These skills and dispositions are what literacy scholar and educator Allan Luke (2009) refers to as ‘a new basic’ for navigating our text and media-saturated world.