Naughty Bus

Jan and Jerry Oke
Little Knowall
Age 3-5

A young boy receives a toy bus as a present and has great fun exploring the world with his new toy which turns out to be quite a naughty bus – or is it the boy being naughty?!! This is a very unusual picture book with a story told through close up photography and mainly narrated by the toy bus. Very cleverly recreating children’s imaginative play this book is great fun to share with your child and to use as a springboard for their own play ideas.

Share the story

Before reading the book
If sharing this story corresponds with a birthday or other reason for a present you might like to wrap up a toy bus for children to unwrap before introducing the book – a special story about a new toy.

Read aloud
Read the book to children pausing to look closely at the pictures as you do. Children will enjoy hearing it more than once and joining in with the parts they remember.

Talk about the book
Talk about what is happening in some of the scenes in the story eg

How do the people at the bus stop feel when the bus doesn’t stop?

What will happen when the dinosaur sees the bus?

Talk about all the adventures the boy and the bus have in the story.

Things to make and do

Story play
Encourage children to recreate some of the scenes from the story using their own toys eg the tall buildings and traffic in London, the bus queue or in the garden (or park) even the baked bean scene if you can bear the mess! Children can retell parts of the story in their own words as they recreate these scenes.

Make your own naughty bus adventure
Take a toy bus or another small toy vehicle off for adventures indoors and in the garden if you have one or the local park.

Make a story with photos
Take close up photos together of the bus in different places, inside and out.  If possible print them and make a book of your naughty bus photos together.  Ask your child to tell you about each photo and scribe their words as captions  to go with the pictures.  Alternatively you could look at digital photos together as a slide show or make a photostory with them.

Sing a song
Sing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ click here for the words. You might like to create a new version to the same tune together instead changing the words to The Naughty Bus….

Go on a bus journey
This is especially fun if children haven’t been on a bus journey before. Children could draw a picture of themselves on the bus after your trip. Talk together about what they noticed and remember about the bus.

Find out more

Sing a song about a bus
Below is an animation of the song ‘Wheels on the Bus’

 See lovemybooks ideas for sharingThe Wheels on the Bus

From KidsTV123

Read what the author, Jan Oke, said about The Naughty Bus:

‘The text I’ve used is in the form of speech only, to reflect how children play and the photographs are shot at child’s eye level to make the scenes easy to ‘read’. I hope adults will enjoy it too, so they’ll want to read it with their children and work out together what on earth is going on – and who’s the naughty one – the bus or the boy?’

Buy online