Sharing a Shell

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Look on a map and find the location of your nearest beach. How would you get there? How long would the journey take? My real breakthrough was THE GRUFFALO, again illustrated by Axel. We work separately - he’s in London and I’m in Glasgow - but he sends me letters with lovely funny pictures on the envelopes. The illustrations are bright and eye catching for the children and they loved the glittery look and feel to the pictures. It was nice to have a story based underwater for a change and good for them to learn about what crabs two friends are as not all of the children had seen that type from creature before. Make a video to retell the story. Can you include pictures, narration, music and sound effects? Watch this example for inspiration: I grew up in a tall Victorian London house with my parents, grandmother, aunt, uncle, younger sister Mary and cat Geoffrey (who was really a prince in disguise. Mary and I would argue about which of us would marry him).

Look at the use of punctuation in the story. When have full stops, commas, questions marks, exclamation marks (etc.) been used and why?The above video may be from a third-party source. We accept no responsibility for any videos from third-party sources. Please let us know if the video is no longer working.

Before Malcolm and I had our three sons we used to go busking together and I would write special songs for each country; the best one was in Italian about pasta. I really enjoy writing verse, even though it can be fiendishly difficult. I used to memorise poems as a child and it means a lot to me when parents tell me their child can recite one of my books. This is a great book that shows the ups and downs friendships can have but still shows that there's always a way to work through problems. With sharing being difficult for children it is lovely how we get to see the crab facing the consequences of his decisions not to share and the children got to think about what they thought was the right thing for crab to do.

How is glitter used in the illustrations? Think about the different materials that artists can use and try to use them in different ways. Sharing a Shell is a delightful rhyming book with vibrant glittery illustrations to capture the attention of little eyes and ears. This story highlights the important role that sharing plays in building lasting friendships. The characters work well in a team, each doing their own job to keep their little worlds running smoothly. This story could be a great springboard to a discussion around using our individual strengths to cooperate with one another in a team.