Like many of Quentin’s books The Green Ship can be appreciated at several levels. Young children can enter imaginatively into the story of the make-believe ship  which is discovered when Alice and her brother climb over the wall into the garden of the big house. Older children might go beyond this to look at the character of the mysterious Mrs Tredegar and what the ship is doing in her garden.

Who is Mrs Tredegar?

Writing activities

• Read the story to the children, reminding them that it’s both written and illustrated by Quentin Blake and that the pictures will provide them with information that’s as valuable as the text.
• Discuss the character of Mrs Tredegar looking for textual and visual clues to back up ideas. For example, she’s rich because she wears ‘posh clothes’, has a big garden and a gardener to attend it.
• Use a range of questions to promote discussion about her story, for example, why does she have an imaginary ship in her garden? Who is the man in uniform in the photo? Does Mrs Tredegar believe that the ship is real? Why is she always asking what the Captain would have done? What is the role of the Bosun and how much does he believe in  the story? How does Mrs Tredegar feel about the fact that the ship will disappear one day?
• Ask the children to write their own character descriptions of Mrs Tredegar.
  These are examples of work produced by a mixed-ability Y5 class.

• An alternative focus might be to look at  settings and the historical context of the story – why are the children staying with their aunt? Could they be evacuees? Mrs Tredegar and the Bosun are wearing clothes from another age. They play old-fashioned games such as deck quoits and they’re drinking lime juice and eating madeira cake and cucumber sandwiches.