Purple band
Yellow bandReady now · Open and print today
Uncle James, or The Purple Stranger
From The Book of Dragons, by E. Nesbit
This story is from The Book of Dragons, by E. Nesbit, first published in 1900. Nesbit was an English writer who loved to tell funny, exciting tales with dragons and magic. In this story, a whole kingdom spins the wrong way, so all the animals grow to the wrong sizes—and only a clever boy and a tiny elephant can set things right. This text reflects its era; a few period terms have been modernised.
- Band
- Yellow · Emerging readersTypical starting range: ages 6–8
- Length
- medium · about 594 words in 6 sections · 4 pictures
- Source
- The Book of Dragons, E. Nesbit
- First published
- see the About page in the reader
- Regions
- Canada · United States
Included formats
- · Web reader and PDF
- · EPUB for e-readers
- · Home-print sheet
- · Folded booklet
- · Binder edition (8.5 × 11)
- · Worksheet
- · Quick Check (8 questions) with answer key
- · Read-aloud script
- · Colouring page
- · Teacher’s Edition (members)
Lesson at a glance
- Reading
- about 10 minutes at this band
- Pause questions
- 3
- Words to Know
- 6
- Quick Check
- 8 questions, with the answer key
- Let’s Talk
- 3 questions for afterwards
- Worksheet
- questions, an activity and a drawing prompt
About 40 minutes with one story, all of it.
Readers are engineered from the original public-domain text with AI under HummingRead’s published canon and Content Philosophy, checked by automated audit and sampled by a person. Pictures are made with AI to HummingRead’s brief for each story. How a reader is made.
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