The Iron Giant

Ted Hughes's The Iron Giant is a short, strange and brilliant story for 9 year olds about a giant made of iron who walks off a cliff and then comes back for the farmers' tractors.

What happens

Nobody knows where the Iron Giant came from. He towers over houses. His head is shaped like a dustbin but as big as a bedroom, and his eyes glow like headlights. In the very first chapter he steps off a cliff and smashes to pieces on the beach below. Then one of his hands finds one of his eyes, and bit by bit he puts himself back together!

Soon farm machinery starts to disappear. Tractors, ploughs, barbed wire. There are giant bite marks and footprints the size of a bed. It's a farmer's son called Hogarth who first spots him, and it's Hogarth who helps the farmers lure him into a huge pit.

But Hogarth feels guilty straight away. And when the Iron Giant digs his way out (right under a family picnic!), it's Hogarth who walks up to him with an old horseshoe and makes him an offer.

That's only the first half. Later the whole world faces a much bigger problem, a creature from space the size of Australia that wants to eat every living thing. And it's the Iron Giant who takes it on.

The writing is a huge part of the pleasure. It's almost like a poem, full of repeats and sounds you'll want to read out loud. CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! Clink, Clink, Clink! It's short too, so it's a great one to share over a few bedtimes.

It's a bit spooky in places. The giant hunting across the rocks for his own ear is wonderfully eerie, and the space creature is a proper monster, with armies firing everything they've got at it. But nothing is gory, and it ends somewhere really hopeful.

This edition uses American spellings (plow, favorite), which some children might spot.

If you've got a reader who likes big, strange stories that feel a bit like fairy tales, this is a must.

What to read next

If they want to meet Hogarth again, The Iron Woman is in the library too. It's darker and angrier. A girl called Lucy watches a huge black figure drag itself up out of the marsh mud, and Hogarth comes to help her.