It’s time to play pretend! In “What Shall We Play?” by Sue Heap, we explore the wonderful world of imagination and all the fun we can have there.
Lily Mae wants to play fairies, but Matt wants to pretend to be trees. He acts the role of a big tree, while Martha is a shaky tree and Lily Mae is a quiet tree. They all reached their arms up to the sky, pretending that their branches were climbing toward the sun. Their impersonations are really quite good – I nearly mistook them for actual trees.
Lily Mae would like to play fairies now, but Martha suggests that they play cars. Martha was a fast car, Matt was a bumpy car, and Lily Mae was a new car. But look out – with so many cars on the road, it’s sure to cause a traffic jam!
Lily Mae suggests, one more time, that they play fairies. But the other children would rather play cats. Martha was a slow cat, Matt was a sleepy cat, and Lily Mae was a creeping cat. Together they meowed and washed their whiskers.
Vetoing the fairy suggestion with one of pretending to be Jell-o, Matt leads them in a game about the most fun dessert.
Finally, they decide to play fairies, and they fly and they fly and they fly.
I enjoyed the way cooperation was modeled in this book. Lily Mae didn’t get her way until the end, but she played with everyone and waited patiently for her turn. I think most children would naturally feel sad that their suggestion wasn’t taken, but this book is a great tool to show children that taking turns can be fun, and it can also be rewarding.
Each page in the book is brilliantly colored and the illustrations are just darling as well, making this not only a useful book, but a very cute one as well.
(This book was published in 2002 by Candlewick Press and was illustrated by the author.)
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