Team Toppsta absolutely adores Rob Biddulph’s books so we were thrilled to receive an early copy of his fantastically funny new picture book, Show and Tell – an out-of-this-world adventure which shows that biggest isn’t always best! And here to tell you all about it is the creative star himself…
There was a time a year or two ago when, according to my daughters, every school day was Show and Tell day. In the mornings, between eating their breakfast and brushing their teeth, they would scrabble around for something, anything, to take in to class for their friends’ enjoyment.
They started out relatively small: a stick that we found on the way to school; a dance medal; a jar full of sand from a beach in Cornwall; several rocks from the aforementioned beach in Cornwall; a photo of my brother’s dog; a pencil; et cetera. You get the idea.
But it wasn’t long before the girls started to aim slightly higher. We went from the obligatory fossil to an ice cream tub painted to look like The Mystery Machine via a genuine wand from genuine Olivander’s in genuine Diagon Alley and (my personal favourite) a collection of human teeth.
It was at this point I realised that Show and Tell was, in fact, a competitive sport. Speaking to other parents in the playground about their tales of trusting their five-year-old to take in and, crucially, return home with their precious hand-painted animation cell from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, or their great grandmother’s diamond engagement ring, it struck me that there was a good picture book to be had in there somewhere. And here we are, a few years later, with my new book Show and Tell about to be published by HarperCollins.
It was a lot of fun to take the idea and run with it as far as I could, coming up with the most ridiculous things for children to bring in to school. The feedback that I’ve had so far has revealed competitive showing and telling to be a pretty universal phenomenon amongst KS1 kids, so we’re hoping that it strikes a chord with lots of people.
The ultimate dream is that somebody takes a copy of the book in for Show and Tell at school. That would just be so meta!
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