National Year of Reading, teachers' resources

Fabulous First Line Friday (27 April)

Alphabet Soup

To celebrate the National Year of Reading, we are sharing some first lines from books on our bookshelves. So, every Friday for the rest of the year we’re posting a fabulous first line here on Soup Blog.

Here’s today’s Fabulous First Line*:

One afternoon … a princess and her panther crossed the desert sand.

What do you think—if you opened a book and read that first line, would you want to read on?

Do you know the name of the book? (We’ll put it right at the end of this post so you can try to guess first.)

*For the purposes of Fabulous First Line Friday, we’re counting the first line as the first line of chapter 1 in any book. So if there is an introduction or an author’s note or something before chapter 1, we don’t count that bit …
The book is The Princess and her Panther by Wendy Orr, illustrated by Lauren Stringer

Published by Alphabet Soup

This post was added by Rebecca Newman. Rebecca is a children's writer and poet, and the editor of the Australian children's literary blog, Alphabet Soup. For more about Rebecca visit: rebeccanewman.net.au.