From award-winning author Louise Greig and acclaimed illustrator Júlia Sardà comes an uplifting story about how to confront big emotions.Ed’s bad mood begins as something really small, hardly a thing at all. But before long it grows, gathers pace, and spreads through the whole town. Can Ed sweep his troubles away?

Haley Hatch

Mariah Dominic

Lacey

Renée Nacole Lugar

Marie

Victoria

rallenta

Emma

Joy Shelton Warren

Jennifer Garrett

Kerri

Sweep

This has been on my want to read list for a while and when I came across it in Waterstones and flicked through it, I bought it straight away!  Sweep! follows Ed and his bad mood and demonstrates how easy it is to get carried away and over react when you are in a bad mood. The beautiful illustrations perfectly create a metaphor for the "bad mood" that may help children to think about their own actions when they have been in a bad mood and how it affects others.  In a KS1 class I would read this story as a book for enjoyment, as it is still quite funny in nature, but the deeper meaning within the metaphor may elude them and become too complicated, so for younger readers I wouldn't try to over analyse this book.  However, I can see myself using this book with a KS2 class all the time, to pick apart how a bad mood can start off small and all the choices that can be made that will either make their mood better or even worse. I think that KS2 children would enjoy the complexity of the hidden meaning behind the illustrations and it would spark a conversation that would then encourage them to reflect on their own ways of dealing with their moods. This is one of the few picture books that I have come across that I want to own that would be great to use with older children to keep their intake of books as diverse as possible.  On a personal level, whilst reading this book aloud to Avital, we both found that we really related to the story, even though the storyline is very abstract and no one would ever have had Ed's exact experience, his actions and emotions are ones that will be familiar to everyone, and everyone will be able to recall a time where they have made the same decisions as Ed did in the book. As this story had been about Ed being in a bad mood about something very niche and separate, it allows everyone to relate which opens up the book to all readers.

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