You Choose: A new story every time – what will YOU choose? (You Choose, 9)

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Of course, the pictures provide numerous possibilities for additional things to discuss, too. ‘How would it feel to have a wizard as a relative?’ ‘Would you rather live in a cave or a treehouse?’ ‘If you had a pet dragon, what name would you give it?’ ‘What kind of person would wear pointy shoes like those?’ Why not try Dorothee de Monfriend's A Day With Dogs, Natasha Durley's Creature Features, Susan Steggall's The Life of a Caror Katie Abey's We Wear Pants?

For me it’s a rollercoaster of emotions that I’m trying to manipulate the reader into’ - Alex Wheatle on fictional world building, creating new language and seeing yourself in a book Make a book - You Choose begins with 'Imagine you could have anything you wanted!' Collect the children's ideas about what they would choose if they could have anything they wanted and put their ideas in a book with photos and pictures.

Books by Pippa Goodhart

The classic Would You Rather... by BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award winner John Burningham presents children (and adults!) with a thought-provoking array of unusual choices in a slightly different way - from 'would you rather eat supper in a castle, breakfast in a balloon, or tea on the river?' to, 'would you rather be made to eat spider stew, taste slug dumplings, chew mashed worms, or drink a snail shake?' There are three other You Choose books now. You Choose in Space follows the original format but places everything in an extra-terrestrial setting. You Choose Your Dreams stimulates imaginations by asking how it would feel to be gigantic or tiny or a wild animal or made of cheese. And the sequential nature of You Choose Fairy Tales increases the storytelling possibilities. You Choose is great fun to peruse by yourself but it works particularly well as a book to be shared. That’s because it’s impossible to look at the book with another person and not have a conversation about the pictures. Perhaps because we tend to talk more freely when looking at something else rather than each other, we’ve often been told how helpful the book is for speech development, increasing vocabulary, enhancing communication skills and as a bonding tool. Here are some ways it has been enjoyed, as related to us over the years. Lots of these ideas have come directly from children.

We’ve also heard from quite a few teachers how the book has been utilised to help teach basic maths or linked in with geography (matching the various areas on the ‘Where would you go?’ spread to actual locations), history (finding out when the old-fashioned items on the ‘Shoes and Hats’ spread would have been worn) and art (everyone contributing an image to create a large ‘You Choose’-type wall display, for example). As always, we asked you to recommend your own favourites, or books you think fit the bill after You Choose- and boy, did you deliver! Here are just some of the ideas you came up with:Make some hats - make simple cone shaped hats and let the children decorate them however they like, or give them the choice of transforming it into a clown's hat or a princess's. Homes - the book has pictures of different kinds of homes - talk with the children about the kind of home they live in. Look at the similarities and differences.