The First Hunter

by Robert Swindells, Si Clark (Illustrator)

Tan and his family are scavengers, living like jackals, stealing from the kills of lions and other big cats to survive. It's no life at all. Then Wid, the simplest of them all, comes up with a daring proposal...Particularly suitable for struggling, reluctant and dyslexic readers aged 8+

64 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2009

About the author

Robert Swindells was born in Bradford in 1939, the eldest of five children. He left the local Secondary Modern School at fifteen to work as a copy holder on the local newspaper. At seventeen he enlisted in the RAF and served for three years, two in Germany. On being discharged he worked as a clerk, engineer and printer until 1969 when he entered college to train as a teacher having obtained five 'O' levels at night-school. His first book 'When Darkness Comes' was written as a college thesis and published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1972. In 1980 he gave up teaching to write full time. He likes travelling and visits many schools each year, talking and reading stories to children. He is the secutatry of his local Peace Movement group. Brother in the Land is his first book for Oxford University Press. He is married with two grown-up daughters and lives in Bradford.

Author description taken from Brother in the Land.

Reviews

[Claire]

Pleasant enough read.

[Anna Davidson]

A short Stone Age adventure story.

[Tracy Enright]

This booked, aimed at teens and reluctant readers, tells the story of a group of prehistoric hunter/gatherers and the breakthrough that allowed them to hunt for meat rather than just steal the kills of lions and other predators.

Whilst the story telling, sentence structure, and the sentiments expressed by the characters are simple, in keeping with their primitive way of life, it gives a good insight into how hard just surviving must have been when the only food available was what you could find or steal from four-legged hunters.

This book would be a good introduction for discussions about our earliest history.

[Tiffany Sherrum]

A very simple book about what the author thought hunting was like before humans learned to kill animals themselves. Much like most of these short reads for children, it's enough to keep the reader engaged, but so short that you could summarise the entire plot in a couple of sentences after you've finished it.