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Sharing a ShellJulia Donaldson
Sharing a Shell
by Julia Donaldson
A hermit crab wants his new shell to himself, and the bristleworm and anemone who move in turn out to be worth keeping.
A story about animals, warm and rhyming in tone. We would put it with children of 3–6, and at a reading age of about 5 for reading alone.
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Our take on this book
A hermit crab wants his smart new shell entirely to himself and is furious when a bristleworm and a blob of an anemone move in — until the three unlikely flatmates discover that each of them can do something the others cannot, and that sharing the shell is the only way any of them survives. Julia Donaldson's rockpool rhyme is a warm little parable about cooperation that never feels like a lesson, carried along by her usual irresistible verse and Lydia Monks's sparkly, glittery seashore art. There is nothing frightening in it, just the small drama of learning to get along. For a three- to six-year-old it is a bright, tactile read-aloud — the glitter on the pages is a genuine draw for small hands — with a gently reinforced message about friendship and pulling together that lands softly through the story rather than on top of it. A lovely, lesser-known Donaldson worth seeking out.
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Or let them write their own.
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