Dandylion

When bright yellow Dandylion arrives in Miss Gardener’s neat and tidy class, the children are welcoming and pleased. Dandylion is different. He makes messes and spills things and has extremely odd lunches. He plays scarechase instead of tag, and often Miss Gardener must have ‘quiet words’. But the children love him until he gets them into real trouble. One of the boys explains that though they like Dandylion, he is too much ‘like a weed’. And the penny drops. Dandylion is, well, a dandelion, and the rather dull, colourless children in the class are ordinary garden plants. Dandylion is terribly sad, but Grandpa-Clock has the answer: ‘a weed is only the name given to a wildflower growing in the wrong place.’ Dandylion goes back to a school that has learned to miss his colour and fun. The illustrations tell the story right from the beginning with a bright yellow Dandylion bouncing into a room full of neat rows of children on a green rug. The children develop colour as Dandylion perks up their lives and lose it again when he leaves. The whole class become wildflowers for the day in the end, and Dandylion feels ‘like a wild flower in the right place’. Super!