Suitabook
Who is our friend?
Jade Mathieson Duckitt
CC BY 4.0Credits & Licence
Originally published by Book Dash. Writer: Jade Mathieson Duckitt. Illustrator: Gerhard van Wyk. Designer: Lara De Groot. Editor: Zanri Kritzinger.
Cover resized and converted to WebP; artwork unchanged. Suitabook’s AI guidance is a separate assessment.
Original Book on Book Dash: Who is our friend? (opens in a new tab)- Reading
- Pause at each animal’s difficulty and invite a guess about how Bird might help. Then notice facial expressions and details in the pictures, and let the child retell the repeated pattern.
- Themes
- Friendship across differences: Bird differs from Rhino, Crocodile, Giraffe and Zebra, but helps them, sings, and is welcomed; Giraffe then asks Bird to be his friend. The group explicitly accepts Bird’s difference, and the story presents their friendship as welcoming.
- Helping one another: Bird assists four animals with specific difficulties, including removing fleas, cleaning teeth, reaching a spot and watching for danger. The story presents Bird’s practical help positively; the animals express gratitude and trust.
- Worth knowing
- Bird eats the fleas on Rhino and pecks Crocodile’s teeth clean. These animal-care moments are shown matter-of-factly in playful illustrations; consider whether a child might find them surprising.