Night Noises by Liliana Mañetto Quick is an imaginative, visually rich comic that follows a child struggling to sleep in an unfamiliar, seemingly silent environment. Missing the comforting sounds of city life, the child encounters a mischievous night-time companion who reveals a world alive with rustling, chirping, growling, and other unexpected noises. Together, they explore the creatures and sounds around them, gradually transforming uncertainty into curiosity and wonder. Through expressive illustrations, playful dialogue, and vivid sound effects, readers discover how a change in perspective can make an unfamiliar place feel more welcoming.

Blending humour, fantasy, and gentle reassurance, the text supports students to think deeply about friendship, resilience, and connection with the natural world. It invites discussion about adapting to change, understanding fears, and noticing the life around us. The interplay between words and pictures provides rich opportunities to explore visual storytelling and infer meaning, making this an engaging and accessible text for upper primary learners.

 

This pack contains wide range of response activities including:

• A guided reading plan exploring key literacy elements including inference and deduction, language use, making connection and text organisation, along with key questioning to promote emotional intelligence, metacognition and compassionate inquiry. 
• An independent learning contract complete with explainer videos for activity clarity
  
• A wide range of response activities to support developing and embedding key literacy skills including sentence and word work, spelling, and cloze activities. 

Curriculum Phase: Phase 2

Year Level: Year 5

English: reading for meaning, interpreting visual storytelling and comic conventions, exploring dialogue and onomatopoeia, analysing how colour and illustration convey mood, inferring character feelings and changes in perspective, sequencing events, and supporting ideas with evidence from words and images

Health and Physical Education: emotional wellbeing, managing change, understanding fears, friendship, resilience, and developing confidence in unfamiliar situations

Social Sciences: diverse family structures, whānau relationships, identity and belonging, adapting to a shared home, and understanding how people’s needs influence decisions

Science: observing living things, exploring nocturnal animal behaviour and sounds, recognising habitats, and developing curiosity about the natural world

Fiction: fantasy narrative, comic

Key words include: adaptation, animals, belonging, change, comic, curiosity, dialogue, emotional wellbeing, environment, fantasy, fears, friendship, graphic narrative, habitats, humour, illustrations, nature, night, nocturnal animals, onomatopoeia, perspective, resilience, sound, visual literacy