THE MAGIC BEADS

When a little girl living in a shelter has to produce something for Show and Tell, she is filled with anxiety until her imagination takes over. Lillian’s tummy flutters with nervous butterflies on her first day of second grade in a new school. Butterflies magnify into grasshoppers when her teacher explains the daily classroom Show and Tell and assigns Fridays to Lillian. As the week advances, the grasshoppers grow into rabbits and then into donkeys and finally into stampeding buffalo as Lillian worries what she’s going to show. She has no toys in the shelter where she’s living with her abused mother until they can afford an apartment. Watching classmates show off spiffy dolls, scooters, Lego spaceships, robots and action figures, Lillian resents her absent abusive father as well as her mother, who can’t afford to buy a new toy. But when Friday arrives, the resilient Lillian relies on her strand of plastic beads and lots of imagination to create the best Show and Tell ever. Simple line-and-watercolor illustrations effectively contrast innocent classroom activities with Lillian’s dark inner fears. A talisman for anxious readers. (Picture book. 7-9)