Minnie and her big, scruffy dog Max are great friends and love to play together, and Max always meets Minnie from school, along with Minnie's Grandma. On the way home Minnie bounces along happily and asks lots of questions, but one day when she comes from school, she is looking downcast because two of her friends wouldn't let her play and made unkind remarks about her looks. Grandma suggests a stop in the park to play and to have a milkshake, and this is a great idea. But on the way, both Minnie and Max start thinking about how they would like to be different. Minnie would like to be tall and have straight hair, while Max wants to have short, curly hair like a poodle and to be able to run like a greyhound. While Minnie and Grandma are having their drinks, Minnie confesses that she wishes she 'looked more like her friends'. Grandma is very reassuring and insists that she likes Minnie just as she is. Furthermore, if everyone in the world looked the same, things would be very boring: 'People come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours.' Looking around the park, Minnie sees that this is very true, and Max also sees lots of different kinds of dogs. (There is a wonderful picture of Minnie and Max seeing in their mind's eye a boring picture of lots of little girls, all exactly alike even to the dresses they wear, and lots of dogs all exactly the same too.) Gran suggests that Minnie and Max should go and play with their friends Samir and Ella from school, and while they do so, they learn that each of them has special talents and each is different. On the way home, Grandma shows Minnie a picture of her dad when he was small, and he has fuzzy hair, just like Minnie's. She also shares her Grandma's eye colour, so she learns that she has inherited lots of nice things from her family - and evidently Max has too as he has a mental picture of himself with his parents - all three shaggy and scruffy! (Max has an excellent imagination!) They learn they are glad to be themselves. The illustrations are an outstanding feature of the book and add a great deal to the text, helping tell the story in an accessible and fun way. Available from Amazon, from good book shops, and from the publisher: www.jkp.com.