Photos by Alison Hawes (illustrated by Christiane Engel, as credited on the cover) is a Cambridge Reading Adventures reader in the Pink A band for Play Group at Lahore Grammar School (LGS). On a sky-blue cover, a girl with a blue hair bow holds up a tablet showing a photo of a startled red parrot, which is sitting on a perch right beside her.
The story is a simple, funny one: a girl is trying to take photos of her family, but her pet parrot keeps getting in the way. Children love the joke, and the repeated sentence (‘Here is my …’) gives them a pattern they can read after only one or two pages.
What happens in the book
According to the teaching notes, the story features a series of accidental photos as the parrot gets in the way of every attempt to take a good picture. On page 2 the girl says ‘Here is my dad.’ On each following page the person changes (the notes mention mum, Grandpa and Grandma), and the picture shows who is in the photo and where the parrot has landed. The repeated frame is ‘Here is my …’, and the words ‘Here’, ‘is’ and ‘my’ appear on every page. On the final page the word ‘And’ is added, which gives a gentle challenge to children who are checking that each spoken word matches one printed word.
What your child learns from it
The teaching notes list these learning outcomes. A child who reads this book can:
- understand that print carries meaning and is read from left to right;
- develop awareness of capital letter forms (names such as Grandpa and Grandma begin with capitals);
- track one line of simple repeated text.
How to read it with your child at home
Use the guided lesson from the notes:
- Give your child the book, read the title together and ask your child to point to the title.
- Say: the girl is trying to take photos of her family, but her pet bird keeps getting in the way.
- On page 2, read ‘Here is my dad’ slowly while your child points to each word.
- On page 4, ask who she is photographing now, and check the first letter of the word together (‘mum’ starts with the sound /m/).
- Turn through pages 6 to 13 and make sure your child knows the family words, then let them read a page alone.
Fun learning links beyond the book
For literacy, the notes suggest planning a menu for a barbecue in the garden and writing it as a list, which children can illustrate. For language development, ask your child to retell the story using the same sentence (‘Here is my …’) for members of their own family, and to swap the parrot for another animal that keeps getting into the camera shot. Taking a few real photos of your own family afterwards, with your child as photographer, is the perfect finish.
About the Cambridge Reading Adventures Pink A band
Cambridge Reading Adventures is a graded reading series from Cambridge University Press. The Pink A band is the very first step: books for brand-new readers, with only a handful of words (roughly 30 to 60 per book according to the publisher), bright illustrations and a lot of repetition, so a child can recognise the same words again and again and feel like a reader from the first page. Every book carries teaching notes written by Sue Bodman and Glen Franklin, which show a teacher or parent exactly how to share the book.
Who, why, when and where
Whom: Play Group children (about three years old) and the adults who read with them. Why: to learn family words and capital letters, and to practise matching spoken words to printed ones. When: at the start of Play Group, and any time at home. Where: at school, on the sofa, and at family gatherings with a camera. Lahore Grammar School campuses use almost the same books, but a few follow their own list for some subjects. Tell us your child’s campus on WhatsApp and we confirm the book before we dispatch.
Frequently asked questions
What is the main sentence in the book?
‘Here is my …’, repeated on each page with a different family member.
Why does the last page add the word ‘And’?
The publisher’s notes say it creates a gentle challenge for children who are checking their own word-by-word reading.
Who illustrated it?
Christiane Engel is credited on the cover alongside author Alison Hawes.
Ready to order? Send us a WhatsApp message with the class, and we will confirm availability and dispatch Photos the same way we send every LGS: carefully packed, with Cash on Delivery across Pakistan.
Available to order now for the 2027-28 session.
