Inspiring Young Readers

posted on 25 Nov 2025

A Totally Big Umbrella by Sarah Crossan, illustrated by Rebecca Cobb

When you’re very young the world is full of strange new experiences and some of them can make anxiety levels rise alarmingly. What seems like an everyday event to older children and adults can become something threatening and even overwhelming for the very young. Take rain for example – it can ruin your day and mess-up everything you hold dear but, worst of all, it’s unpredictable and uncontrollable.

This is exactly what little Tallulah discovers in A Totally Big Umbrella by Sarah Crossan. A sudden downpour catches Tallulah and her friends playing and having a picnic – her dress is soaked and her lovely, lovely biscuits spoiled. But she has a solution – she’ll borrow her grandmother’s umbrella and take it with her wherever she goes – just in case.

Even on the brightest days when all her other little friends are skipping or climbing trees or when she’s on the way to school (even in class!) she keeps the umbrella at the ready. Rain isn’t going to ruin her life ever again.

Soon though her obsession is out of control and she convinces herself that her current umbrella isn’t big enough and that maybe she needs two instead of one. What if she attaches old raincoats to her brolly – she can sit under it like a tent and the rain will never get her.

But when the rain does come and she sees everyone else just carry on, continuing to have fun while she hides under her totally big umbrella, it dawns on her that maybe, just maybe, there’s a different kind of enjoyment to be had in the rain. Maybe it doesn’t have to spoil everything, maybe it can create more irresistible fun.

A delightful story for younger children that acknowledges their anxieties but helps to show them that different isn’t always dangerous. The book is lavishly illustrated by the excellent Rebecca Cobb and the generous size of the book allows the words and pictures to work in unison to tell the story and the full page illustrations burst with colour and detail.

Available now from Walker Books, you will be able to get a copy from your local independent bookshop – who will be happy to order it for you if they don’t have it on their shelves.

 

Terry Potter

November 2025