The Sandwich Swap
Picture Book Read Aloud
book summary
The Sandwich Swap is such a sweet story about appreciating differences and accepting one another for who they are. Lily and Salma are best friends who do everything together at school. However, they bring very different things to eat for lunch each day. Lily brings a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day, and Salma brings hummus stuffed into pita bread.
Both girls thing the other’s lunch is disgusting and can’t imagine how they could possibly eat something so gross!
The two friends had kept their thoughts about each other’s sandwich secret until one day when Lily tells Salma what she thinks about her hummus on pita bread for lunch. The disagreement escalates into an exchange of verbal insults, hurt feelings, classmates taking sides, and flying food.
Fortunately, the disagreement was short-lived! The next day, the two friends sit next to each other and offer to taste each other’s sandwiches, so they knew what it really like.
This book is the perfect book to spark a discussion with your class about cultural and other differences in your class, encouraging your students to get to know each other. Being unique is what makes each of us special, and we should welcome and celebrate these differences in our classmates, friends, colleagues, family members, and everyone in between. This is such an important message for our students to understand and one that many adults still need to embrace.
My favorite quote from the book… “It’s easy to jump to conclusions when we come across something new or foreign or strange. But if we take the time to get to know each other, stand in each other’s shoes and listen to a different point of view, we learn something wonderful—about someone else and about ourselves.”
Just a beautiful message!
suggested teaching point
In addition to being a great book for building classroom community, The Sandwich Swap can also be used as a mentor text for writing.
The author begins this story by saying “It all began with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich…” This is an example of starting a story with a hook. A hook is written to grab the readers’ attention and make them interested in reading more. When I hear “It all began with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” I want to know what began with the sandwich, so I want to keep reading.
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