This story is part of Reading Champion, a series carefully linked to book bands to encourage independent reading skills, developed with Dr Sue Bodman and Glen Franklin of UCL Institute of Education (IOE)

Stone Soup is a retelling of a classic tale of cleverness and working together. How will the mysterious stranger help the town come together and make delicious stone soup fit for a king?

Reading Champion offers independent reading books for children to practise and reinforce their developing reading skills.

Fantastic, original stories are accompanied by engaging artwork and a reading activity. Each book has been carefully graded so that it can be matched to a child’s reading ability, encouraging reading for pleasure.

Katie Dale

Katie Dale had her first poem ‘The Fate of The School Hamster’ published in The Cadbury’s Book of Children’s Poetry, aged 8 and hasn’t stopped writing since. On graduating, she went travelling through South-East Asia – only to discover whilst in a Vietnam internet cafe that she was a winner of the SCBWI 2008 Undiscovered Voices competition.

Silvia Provantini

Silvia Provantini was born in Venice in 1970. She lives and works in Milan. After graduating from the Institute of Applied Arts at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, she spent a year studying animation and set design before realising that her future was to illustrate children’s books. She mainly works with publishing companies all over the world. She has two kids, two cats, and love the sea.