Hold on tight by Sara Acton

Scholastic Press, 2013. ISBN 9781742833491.
What would happen if you were light as a leaf and the wind swept you up and blew you through the sky? In this delightful book, Sara Acton explores that idea. 'Hold on tight to my hand today. You wouldn't want to blow away. Would you?' says mother to daughter as they are out for a walk on a windy autumn day. 'Would I?' thinks the little girl and her imagination starts to envisage just what might happen. For if you were light as a leaf, you could share cherry buns and a cup of tea with a bird in a tree, or chase a fairy floating along all light and airy . . . the possibilities are only limited by your imagination. But what if it started to rain?
Written in rhyming couplets, and accompanied by whimsical watercolours this is a delightful story from Sara Acton, 2012 winner of Children's Book Council of Australia Crichton Award for new illustrators for Ben and Duck. With the seasons turning  and all the perennial studies of the changes of autumn showing up in teachers' planning, this would be a great book to add to the collection. It offers so much scope. I can envisage a mural where each child has drawn themselves astride a leaf they have created with a couplet of their adventure written on it. This is a book that may well be on the CBCA Notables list.
Barbara Braxton