This is the story about the sunflower that just couldn’t grow as tall as her brothers and sisters!

Like all the other children, Jake carefully planted his sunflower seed in a pot full of compost.

“Now you must water your sunflowers, children, and give them lots of love and care,” said Miss Parker who helped out at Sunnyville Nursery. “Remember, the challenge is to grow the tallest sunflower ever!”

“My sunflower is going to grow bigger than yours!” said a girl to Jake. She was called Chloe. “It’s going to be the biggest and the bestest!”

“Well my sunflower is going to be the tallest of them all,” said a boy called Ben. “And I’ll be the winner!”

Jake bit his lip as he wondered just how big his sunflower would grow. If it was even going to grow at all!

As the weeks went by, all the children watched as little shoots began to spring up from the compost. Their little seeds were becoming flowers at last! All except one… Jake stared in disappointment at his pot of compost. There was no sign of any shoots at all.

“Don’t worry, Jake,” laughed Ben. “Perhaps you could be the winner of the ‘Invisible Sunflower’ contest!”

“Now remember, children, we want to grow the tallest sunflower out of all the nurseries in the UK who are taking part in WaterAid’s Sunflower Challenge,” said Miss Parker. “And if we win, we’ll be receiving a colourful mural for one of the walls in our nursery. Won’t that be lovely?”

“Miss, what’s a mural?” asked a girl from the back of the room.

“It’s a larger-than-life painting – ours could have lots of sunflowers all over it. What do you think, kids? In fact, why don’t we start designing our mural full of fun sunflowers? And if we win the Sunflower Challenge, perhaps we could show our design ideas to the mural artist. And if we lose the competition, perhaps we could paint our very own mural on the wall?”

With that, all the children set to creating a design full of fun-looking sunflowers. Some children painted theirs with big googly eyes. Some painted hats and scarves on theirs. Others painted some goofy-looking insects full of many colours all over their sunflowers. Even if they lost the Sunflower Challenge, even if they couldn’t grow the largest sunflower in the whole of England, then at least they could paint their very own sunny mural.

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