Alfie Wins a Prize

Alfie decides to enter the painting competition at the Big School's Harvest Fair. The judges think his picture is worthy of one of the main prizes. But Alfie is more taken with the consolation prize – a folorn looking woolly animal that looks like it needs some consoling itself.

What is just lovely about this book – as with all the Alfie books – is not so much the plot as the finely-observed detail of family life. Both in her words and her pictures, Shirley Hughes captures not only the typcial events of the small child's world, but the emotional sway of it too.

Her illustrations cry out to be pored over on repeated re-readings. And there is a dog in the pet show that looks entertainingly like its owner!