Look and Read - Books and Videos and Stuff

BOOKS, VIDEOS & STUFF

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Site maintained by Ben Clarke
(Sorry, I can't provide videos or any other materials, so please don't write to ask!)

STORY BOOKS | COMPUTER GAMES | CASSETTES | VIDEOS

NEW: I'm working on detailed guides to all the STUFF for each individual story separately. You can see the first of these, for Through The Dragon's Eye, by clicking here.

Pupil's Pamphlets and Story Books
How does watching some drama serial on telly help kids learn to read then? Well first of all those drama serials often involve solving grammar or vocabulary-related puzzles (see the Secret Codes page), but most importantly, as well as watching the story on telly, kids can read it in special illustrated Story Books.

Up until the 1990s, in between the drama serial bits of the episodes, Wordy and a presenter would come on and actually read through the Story Book with kids. To pick up the cliffhanger from the previous episode, the text from the Story Book describing what had happened would be shown on screen to read along with.

In the very early days of Look and Read, 35 years ago, there were no pupils' books as such, just sets of worksheets and the story text which pupils had to assemble into their own project books. During the 1970s and 80s, the books were referred to as Pupil's Pamphlets and again contained the text of the story plus interesting extras like maps, factual stuff or games. By the 1990s the pupil's resources were rechristened as Story Books and contained quite simply a text of the story.

Also by the 1990s, it had been acknowledged that Look and Read had a wider appeal than just with 7-year-old "backward readers", and so novels of the stories have been produced alongside the story books, with lots more words and giving much more detail and extra scenes than seen in the TV and Story Book versions. These novels are available to the public and can be bought from online retailers such as Amazon and the BBC Shop.

Here are the covers of every Look and Read story book ever printed - click on any one of them for a bigger image. Also browse the Stories section of this website for pictures from inside the books and in a couple of cases scans of the covers signed by the story's author. Plus go to the Downloads section to get PDF versions of several complete books.

Thanks to Martin Jarvis, David Anderson, Peter Schueler, Shaqui Le Vesconte, David Woodley, David Crichton and BBC Education. If by any amazing chance somebody happens to have kept the pupil's book for Tom, Pat and Friday, the Merry-Go-Round unit from 1966, please get in touch because it would be brilliant to add that cover as an extra here.

Computer Games

Since the late 80s, each Look and Read story has had a computer game made to go along with it, full of subtle grammar-teaching exercises. Originally available only for the BBC Micro, later games have been made available for the Acorn and for PCs. All of the eight games to date have been made by Longman Logotron, and are still available from Longman or through online merchants such as Amazon. Details can be found at Longman's website: www.logotron.co.uk/catalogue/titles/look&read;/, or this US site: www.edu.comspec.net/software/english/lr_look_read.html.

As well as these video games, BBC Education have put full sets of educational games built with Shockwave's Flash on their website. These games, accompanying the stories Spywatch and Zzaap And The Word Master, are freely available to play online through BBCi (the poxy new branding of BBC Online). These Flash games are seriously impressive and extensive for free online stuff, and, of course, come with detailed teacher's notes explaining what kids are learning by playing them.

Oh dear, caught by Baz

DOWNLOAD: You can get the original BBC Micro Geordie Racer game from 'The BBC lives!' website. To play it on a PC you'll need an emulator such as BeebEm.

PLAY ONLINE: You can play both of the Flash games online at www.bbc.co.uk/education/lookandread. You can also download the Spywatch game from the same place, to play whilst offline.

Cassettes and Radio
Look and Read cassettes

Look and Read, as well as being a massively successful schools television series, was also a schools radio series. The radio series consisted quite simply of replaying the songs from the TV episodes with a bit of weak linking material in between, along the lines of "here's Bill the Brickie", "it's Magic E again" or "this song is all about 'th-'words". The first radio series (that I know of) accompanied Cloud Burst's first transmission in 1974. The BBC, by the way, ARE still doing schools radio, in the amazingly accessible slot of 3AM-5AM on Radio 3, but they haven't bothered producing Look and Read radio programmes since the mid-90s.

The only Look and Read story to have broken the radio format was 1994's Earth Warp, whose radio show consisted of a separate 10-part drama series called Space Warp, featuring one of the tertiary characters from the TV show. Brief further details of this can be found on the Earth Warp page.
More Look and Read cassettes

In addition to the radio series, cassettes are made available to schools, featuring a reading of the Story Book for kids to read along with, as well as the songs. Back in the 80s when Look and Read TV stories had narrators, it was this narrator who read the story on tape, providing a direct link between TV and audio. More recently it's been mostly jobbing voice-over people who've done the honours - although they did get Andrew Sachs to read The Legend of the Lost Keys, in which he starred on TV.

A bonus fact about that recording: the batch of tapes which BBC Education had on sale to accompany the 2001 repeat of The Legend of the Lost Keys did not in fact contain the reading of the story, instead due to an engineering fault they had some cheesy animal songs on them.

	This is BBC Education: The introduction to the 1985 radio series, which featured songs from The Boy From Space and Dark Towers (MP3 file) This file has been edited to remove most of the theme tune, but include the continuity announcement and presenter Lee Galpin's first link. 33 seconds @ 32kbps mono = 132kb
	Badger Girl: Download an extract from the cassette, with Gary Watson reading the story book (MP3 file) Although Gary Watson actually narrated the TV version of Badger Girl, none of the character voices he uses bear any resemblance to their TV counterparts. There's plenty of incidental music off the TV used though. 98 seconds @ 32kbps mono = 382kb
	Space Warp: Download the opening theme from the radio spin-off series based on Earth Warp (MP3 file) The opening narration was done by John Evitts, who also played VAL in the programmes, while Pauline Quirke played Ellie and narrated the stories. 56 seconds @ 32kbps mono = 218kb
	Spywatch: Download an extract from David Forrester's reading of the story book released on cassette (MP3 file) Note the beeps used to indicate changing a page, which are used inconsistently on the cassette - sometimes there's a beep when changing pages over a double-page spread, sometimes only when actually turning the page. 63 seconds @ 32kbps mono = 250kb

Videos
Through The Dragon's Eye video cover

Whatever other resources are available, the core of any Look and Read unit is, of course, the story itself. Or more specifically, the TV episodes. For teachers who miss an episode off TV (as is much more likely now they've started only showing each episode of a story once in a term) or who can't be bothered setting the video every week, BBC Educational Publishing make available video copies of the stories. Each unit comes in a double video box set and costs about £30 (Thirty GBP).

BBC video copyright disclaimer

Before anybody gets too excited about ringing the BBC to order up a video of Joe and the Sheep Rustlers or The King's Dragon from the 70s, be aware that the BBC only officially provides videos of the current stories being shown during the present school year (to see which stories are being shown this year, check the Yearly Schedule). They will check their leftover stock from previous years if you want something specific, but to be honest they struggle to find videos from a year ago, never mind two decades ago. It would be impossible to get Joe and the Sheep Rustlers anyway because they don't even have the whole story in their archives.

One very annoying point to note is that the official videos for the late 80s and early 90s stories seem to have been edited by the same idiots that worked for BBC Enterprises / BBC Worldwide at the same period. In other words, all of the end credits from the individual episodes have been removed. Which is intensely annoying as it means less music per episode, and also verges on being illegal as, under their ERA licences, schools are obliged to show the credits to any TV programme they screen wherever possible.

SEE ALSO: Read more about the release of schools programmes on video, plus a full list of all available Look and Read tapes, in the Schools' TV section.

This website has nothing to do with BBC Education. You cannot get any of the resources mentioned here from this website. You need to contact the BBC directly:

BBC EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING distributes resources to schools, handles specific enquiries about availability and accepts orders from account holders. BBC Educational Publishing PO Box 234 Wetherby West Yorkshire LS23 7EU Phone: 0870 830 8000 (national rate, Mon-Fri 8am-6pm) Fax: 01937 845381 Email: bbc@twoten.press.net	BBC INFORMATION handles general enquiries about educational programmes and will send you a catalogue of resources if you ask nicely. BBC Information PO Box 1116 Belfast BT2 7AJ Phone: 08700 100 222 (national rate, 24 hours) Minitel: 020 8576 8168 Email: Edinfo@bbc.co.uk
IMPORTANT: This contact information is provided in good faith, but I have nothing to do with the BBC, so it may well be out-of-date or inaccurate.

If (and only if) you are a teacher or 'UK Educational Professional', you may order resources directly from BBC Educational Publishing over the internet at bbcschoolshop.com. CLICK HERE to search the website for Look And Read material.

THIS UNOFFICIAL WEBSITE HAS NO CONNECTION OF ANY KIND WITH LOOK AND READ OR WITH THE BBC.
The Look and Read title and logo, as well as all related material, is copyright © BBC, 1967-2006. The official BBC Schools website is at www.bbc.co.uk/schools. Everything else on this website © Ben Clarke, 2000-2006.
No malicious infringement of BBC copyrights is intended. Material featured at this site remains the property of the BBC or relevant copyright holders.