Lively Elizabeth! A tale of what happens if you push and shove

Elizabeth is a bit of a handful - she kicks, stamps, shouts and runs about. Then one day she pushes Joe Fitzhugh, creating a chain reaction that ends up with all the children in a disgruntled heap on the floor. The blame is passed back up the chain to Elizabeth, who apologises. Then all the children go outside to play happily together.

This is a perfect nursery tale, detailing brilliantly an everyday occurrence and how best to deal with it: a shove, an unintended accident, an apology, then all is forgiven and forgotten and the children get on with playing. The illustrations are fun and stuffed full of detail, and the fabulous rhyming text has such great pace, tumbling from page to page - just like the children.