Is it the way you giggle? by Nicola Connelly

Ill. by Anna White. New Frontier Press, 2018. ISBN 9781925594102
(Age: 4+) Recommended. Themes: Diversity, Play, Humour, Difference, Family, Inclusivity. Enthusiastic and energetic, a young child leaps across the front cover begging younger readers to open the book. Once inside, the endpapers tell of a party with hats, balloons and skipping rope. Intrigued the reader will delve further, wanting now to be involved and in a mood to laugh. From there they read of all the things that make each one of us different from the other. From the way we giggle, to wriggling toes, do cartwheels, or maybe physical things like the size of a nose, or the curl of the hair, or perhaps the way we sing or swim.
Each page zings with activity as the children dress up in the array of clothes and feathers, necklaces, shoes and hats, or play outside, running and jumping, cartwheeling and swimming, or staying inside with a book, or crayons and paper. Each activity is as different as the children, asking the question on nearly every page, 'What makes you special?' Sometimes a child is alone doing something by themselves, most times they are together in a group, playing, but all times they are happy and active, and at the end they come together as a family group, happy and loving.
By this time many of the readers will be calling out the things they do that makes them happy, joining in with the fun and activity of the book, and those reading it to them will be able to guide their enthusiasm to help them see that everyone is different in their own way, special and individual. The range of activities shown will enthuse the readers to try things out for themselves, to experience what the children in the book are doing, to play along with them.
Nicola and Anna had their first book, My Dad is a Bear, shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Award.
Fran Knight