Sally McBrass can pass by unnoticed. Hiding in plain sight is an underrated quality as Sally gets to watch and observe, observe and watch. In fact, she notices everything…every ill deed, every mean action.
As you can imagine, a busy school often has interactions that aren’t kind or considerate and Justin Roberts highlights each one in a clever rhyming prose. Of course, Sally calls out these issues by asking everyone to be nicer towards each other but not before the ways of a school are presented to the reader in quite an accurate way.
The artwork is perfect for this story. The child-like style makes you feel like Sally herself went away and created an account of her school days as a way of being seen. The way that a line or two conveys emotion is fantastic – a favourite of mine is the scene in which the school bully is led out of school by his dad.
Now for the teacher bit. This is an ideal book for PSHE lessons as it is a book about how to treat each other better. In primary schools, it can be super useful to hold up a picture book to allow the children to reflect on their own actions and how they interact with each other. If we aren’t striving to make our learners be the best humans they can then we are doing something wrong.
Good things come in ALL sizes!
The Great British Bookworm 