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Purple Mash in Print: Top 10 Deadliest Animals

Nov. 20, 2024

Many of you know Purple Mash as the platform used in primary schools, but did you know that to honour the memory of children’s author Johnny Zucker, a close friend of the company, we now also publish books? We’ve started with a fantastic new Top 10 series, but what makes ours so different is that the Purple Mash community was involved in all stages of the project.

How did the Top 10s series start?

Last September we asked children for their help in choosing the theme for our first book. This certainly set the creative juices flowing and we had loads of great suggestions ranging from the top ten ice cream flavours to the top ten planets. We put together a short list of the five most popular suggestions and asked children to think about what they would be most interested in reading and vote for their favourite. The same process was completed by the Purple Mash team with all votes being added together to select our first book.

From our shortlist, the overwhelming favorite was ... Deadliest Animals!

Top 10 Wide

Where did the Top 10s lists come from?

With the subject agreed we then asked all Purple Mash users to send in their own list of their top ten deadliest animals so that we could include some of them in the book.

We were overwhelmed by the number of lists we received. In total, we received over 3,000 lists, which made our decision incredibly difficult. We’d love to have included all of them, but that would have made it a very long book, however we chose 25 which we have included in the book.

Of course, we also did our own research to come up with a Top 10 list, and alongside the lists, the book also includes QR codes for online quizzes and colouring activities, word searches, jokes, and a space for readers to add their own Top 10.

Edie Grindford - Upton Priory School (1)
Edie from Upton Priory School, one of the children whose list made it into the final book

How to buy a Top 10s Book

We’re very proud of this very first Purple Mash Top 10 book and if you would like to get a copy, they are now available to buy here in the 2Simple Shop.

Huge thanks to everyone who got involved in this project, we really couldn’t have done it without you!

Watch this space for more exciting writing projects.