What the Jackdaw Saw - A fabulous new Julia Donaldson book in Association with Life & Deaf

When the lovely people at Macmillan Children's books heard that Miss T had been having a rough time lately with her juvenile arthritis, they kindly sent her a few books to cheer her up.

As we LOVE Julia Donaldson's famous rhyming books, we turned to this one first. It's called 'What the Jackdaw saw' and I have to admit being rather puzzled by the first few pages.

As the Jackdaw flies around to invite various animals to his party, he finds them touching their heads. Very bizarre I thought - as did the Jackdaw it seems.

Until finally we find out just what they were trying to tell him. It's a fun one to re-read once you know the secret as there is a big clue in the illustrations with the storm cloud getting closer and closer and bigger and bigger.

Finally the Jackdaw 'gets' it with the help of a wise owl and manages to invite lots of friends to his party.

As well as the very clever storyline - which has been written not just by the talented Julia Donaldson but also with the help of deaf children in association with the non-profit organisation Life & Deaf. It's illustrated by another very talented person, Nick Sharratt, who we know from many other fabulous children's books.

The author's proceeds from this book will go to The Life & Deaf Association. So what better reason to get a copy...enjoy a great story, learn a little BSL and get to help a brilliant cause all at the same time.

The book has an audio CD to accompany it where the audio story is read by (one of Miss T's all time favourite people) Justin Fletcher. There is also a video on the CD which tells the story in British Sign Language. This video doesn't feature Justin, but the lady signing is very enthusiastic and expressive and the illustrations from the storybook are shown in the background. I couldn't get the video to show in our DVD player but it worked on a computer.

The video is also really handy for learning the signs that are pictured at the end of the book as you can see them being done for real rather than just from a still picture so it makes it far easier to learn how to sign those words yourself.

Me and Miss T had great fun reading this. Thank you Panmacmillan for your kindness in sending us this book.

It's available to buy from Panmacmillan here.