It would be the most perfect gift and book to share in a family, but it will also be a must for any school library. Here we have a narrative that to me reads as a widowed father building a new life with his young daughter. There’s a wedding ring but no mother/wife. Dad and his daughter make their own home, they keep out and then let in their enemies, go on trips, collect treasured things. In the classroom, ‘What We’ll Build’ is a great starting point for Primary-age children to articulate their hopes and aspirations for the future and the ‘tools’ they might need to achieve them. This is the perfect accompaniment to ‘Here We Are: plans for Our Together Future’ that many schools, including my own are using as a whole school text this September. Once again, Oliver Jeffers has created a book that can be appreciated on many different levels, again making it versatile enough to be enjoyed across school. The father-daughter duo build their home, the only material thing they construct, and then they invest their time in the importance of building love, hope, resilience, forgiveness and warmth. The tools are laid out at the very beginning, a selection of hammers, saws, drills (and a tiny pink pig!) from a shiny, red toolbox but we come to realise that the real ‘tools’ we need as parents when building our futures together are trust, comfort, compassion, unconditional love. The toolbox appears throughout the book as if to remind us that we carry these tools around with us on our parenting journey. Inspired by the birth of his daughter, and in the same vein as Here We Are, What We’ll Build is a rhythmic and heartwarming father and daughter story from the beloved Oliver Jeffers. Told in rhyming text with Oliver’s signature art, What We’ll Build is the perfect story to cherish together. My thoughts

Oliver Jeffers is talking about his many, many tattoos. He has sold millions of picture books all over the world – beautifully drawn creations about, say, friendly aliens in broken-down spaceships – but his most personal illustrations by far are the ones that are etched into his own skin. The crosses on his wrist? To mark the spot where he had surgery for a torn ligament “to remind me that my body is fragile and to be careful”.In rhymes, Jeffers also shows us the family they create together, a dad and girl curled up at night by a fire, a pair using their imaginations to ‘play’ games where they visit the moon. Just when you think Oliver Jeffers’ work can’t get any better, he releases yet another stunner. Every bit as wonderful as his other books ‘What We’ll Build’ is the story of parenthood; the hopes and dreams we have for our children’s futures, the protection we give them and the sharing of ever-lasting love.

Task 1:Think again about what you think these two characters might build. See if you can imagine the things they are building and think about them building those things. Where are they? What do they look like? What are they building? What are they using to build?

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Before I became a parent, I didn't - obviously? - traffic in any of the Parenting Industrial Complex and various parenting subcultures. I had zero knowledge of "attachment parenting", zero opinion on "parenting philosophies", and basically zero experience in any of this stuff. Family- and child-centric entertainment and culture had mostly eluded me for the ~20 years between me being a teenager (and rejecting "kid stuff") and me actually having a kid.