Show and Tell

It’s Show and Tell day and class 2L are very excited: the child that most impresses their teacher will win a special prize! One child begins by showing everyone a sunflower seed, but the children begin competing with each other to show a bigger, more impressive thing than the child before: gold violins, a parrot, a grandad’s false teeth, a live alligator and a real racing car… and that’s not even counting the Loch Ness Monster, Big Ben and the Sphinx!

Yet when an alien appears and steals all those wonderful treasures, there’s only one thing left. Fortunately, it’s just the right thing to win the prize. Hurrah!

Rob Biddulph’s fantastic illustration takes in the wonders of the world as well as the more prosaic elements of children’s lives in this brilliant rhyming book about the ever-popular Show and Tell, and the message at the end is a very welcome one  in this age of fervent consumerism: the things that are most magical aren’t necessarily the biggest or most showy. The book’s diverse class 2L is nicely representative of a wide variety of  ethnicities and abilities and is sure to be a favourite to read aloud in the classroom and at home.