All the Ways to Be Smart; Davina Bell, illustrated by Allison Colpoys

Living in an age where children’s ‘smarts’ are too often determined by their academic abilities this is a wonderful read for children - and adults - that champions how everybody is smart in lots of wonderfully different ways.

There are lots of ways to be smart and this book cannot wait to share with you all the different ways that you are smart throughout each and every day. Being smart can be drawing or making things or being helpful. You can be smart at playing, at dancing and at taking chances. You can be smart at pretty much anything and everything. And remember, no-one will ever do the very same smart things as you…

Great book with a great message! All the Ways to Be Smart is a bright and bubbly celebration of all the brilliant things that make children who they are. Being smart is about so much more than the stereotypical ‘book-smart’ where cleverness is associated with doing well on a test and achieving good grades. This message is expertly delivered in a delightfully positive and diverse picture book that re-frames what it means to be smart.

Told in rhyming text and with colourful illustrations that burst from every page, Davina Bell and Allison Colpoys throw up a plethora of different ways to be smart. From the practically smart who build boats from boxes and know where they’re going, to the emotionally smart who are kind, caring and are welcoming. The creatively smart who play musical instruments, to the critically smart thinkers who ask and question, to the knowledge smart who can name the planets.

What I love about this book is that every reader will feel valued as they see their individual strengths and talents recognised and they will no doubt draw confidence and reassurance from it. I would award it top marks but as the words in the book say, ‘Smart is not just ticks and crosses.’ All the Ways to Be Smart is one smart picture book.

Recommended for 5+.