Did You Say Fire!

In Did You Say Fire!, a mouse misinterprets birthday candles as a real fire, triggering a chaotic yet humorous chain of events in a classic "pass the message" storyline. The narrative cleverly illustrates how information can change as it is passed from one character to another, leading to unintended consequences. Children will enjoy following the amusing misunderstanding as it unfolds through vibrant illustrations and dynamic punctuation. The story's structure encourages discussions around communication, perception, and consequence. The frequent use of quotation marks within quotation marks, along with exclamation marks, supports fluency and expression in early readers. This text also features strong visual clues and embedded text in the illustrations, assisting with comprehension and context-building. With high-frequency words such as œwith, œyou, œsaid, œthey, and œwas, the book is ideal for reinforcing essential sight words. Used in a guided reading setting, the book supports prediction, inference, and cause-and-effect analysis.

Educational Benefits:

• Supports development of inferential thinking and understanding of cause and effect.
• Reinforces recognition and understanding of high-frequency words.
• Enhances expressive reading through use of varied punctuation.
• Encourages discussion about message reliability and communication skills.

Classroom Ideas:

• Recreate the story using a classroom œpass the message activity.
• Use role-play to act out each animal's reaction to the message.
• Write a new story using the same format with a different misunderstanding.
• Discuss real-life situations where miscommunication can happen and how to avoid it.

Safety & Information:

• Suitable for ages 5-7
• Book dimensions: 16.5cm x 19cm; 16 pages
• Printed with non-toxic inks and child-safe materials
• Contains no small parts or hazardous elements