Читать книгу The Story Cure - Ella Berthoud - Страница 13

Оглавление

D IS FOR . . .

dark, scared of the

Sleep Tight, Little Bear MARTIN WADDELL, ILLUSTRATED BY BARBARA FIRTH

The Dark LEMONY SNICKET, ILLUSTRATED BY JON KLASSEN

The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark JILL TOMLINSON, ILLUSTRATED BY PAUL HOWARD

Most children are scared of the dark at some point – although because it’s not so much the darkness itself that is feared as the horrible things that might be lurking within it, it’s often not until the imagination is fully fired up that the fear kicks in. The minute it does, bring out the irresistible Sleep Tight, Little Bear. When Little Bear says he can’t sleep, Big Bear has to put down his book just as he’s getting to the good bit¹ and go and see what’s wrong. Lying on his back and holding onto both his feet in the way that children do when they’re a bit embarrassed to admit to something, Little Bear says that he doesn’t like the dark. ‘What dark?’ says Big Bear. ‘The dark all around us,’ says Little Bear, and you can practically see him rocking back and forth on the page. Big Bear goes off to find a lantern and its glow banishes the darkness a little; but there’s still darkness in the corners of the cave. And as Big Bear comes back with bigger and bigger lanterns, we feel his mounting tiredness. Meanwhile we watch Little Bear go through all the stages of restlessness and overtiredness (see: over-tired, being), captured with marvellous accuracy by Barbara Firth. Deeply comforting, this charming and ultimately soporific book will soothe both grown-up and child during these extended bedtimes and last just long enough that the little bear in your charge may also fall asleep before the end.

‘The dark lived in the same house as Laszlo . . .’ is the beguiling start to The Dark, a picture book by Lemony Snicket (pen name of Daniel Handler, best known for his chapter book series, A Series of Unfortunate Events²). By introducing the dark as a something, Snicket separates it from those things it might be concealing, showing us that in and of itself darkness is not a threat. Laszlo, the little boy in this book, gets to know the dark. It has its own favourite places to hang out: behind the shower curtain, in the closet and in the basement. And when he actually engages with the dark, Laszlo finds it to be a surprisingly understanding and helpful thing. In amongst the muted beiges and pale blues of Jon Klassen’s lovely gouache illustrations, the dark makes its presence felt in a solid matt black. By the end, we’re seeing the dark as a something too, but, from now on, a friendly something.

For children on the verge of reading, or now reading themselves, introduce Jill Tomlinson’s charming Plop, the baby barn owl with ‘knackety’ knees in The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark. Plop has decided that he’s too afraid of the dark to be nocturnal. ‘You can’t be afraid of the dark,’ says his mummy. ‘Owls are never afraid of the dark.’ ‘This one is,’ points out Plop. His mother decides to send Plop out each day with the special mission of finding something out about the dark. Only then should he make up his mind, she says. So Plop tumbles out of the nest each day and meets a succession of people and animals who each tell him something about darkness from their point of view. From the little boy who’s looking forward to fireworks, he learns that the dark is ‘exciting’. From the old lady who wants to forget her wrinkles, the dark is ‘kind’. From the girl anticipating a visit from Father Christmas, the dark is ‘necessary’. One by one, the arguments add up to a compelling case. We defy any child not to see darkness in a positive light, so to speak, by the end.

SEE ALSO: anxiety • bed, fear of what’s under the • nightmares • worrying

dating

A Ring of Endless Light MADELEINE L’ENGLE

For wisdom on how to look after yourself in the dating game, give teens the fourth novel in Madeleine l’Engle’s series about the Austin family.³ Vicky is nearly sixteen when, over the course of a summer at her grandparents’ New England holiday home, she dates three very different boys. There’s Leo, the boy next door, who is vulnerable, caring and puppyish. Then there’s the splashy, reckless Zachary, who gives her a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach – but drives too fast and takes her up in a plane without a licence. Lastly there’s Adam, who works with dolphins. Vicky handles her dates with impressive delicacy, experiencing exhilaration with Zachary, intellectual and spiritual understanding with Adam, and emotional intimacy with Leo when he tragically loses his father. Teenagers date differently now to when this story is set, but the need to test out different sorts of partners – without causing offence – remains the same. Young readers will find answers to such issues as how to say no when you need to; who you can trust; and how to work out which person, if any, you really like.

SEE ALSO: choice, spoilt for • dumped, being • first kiss • first love • virginity, loss of

daydreaming, being accused of

Charlotte Sometimes PENELOPE FARMER

Once upon a time, dreamy types caught gazing out the window were rapped over the knuckles and written off as fantasists at best and woolgatherers at worst. Happily, psychologists now recognise daydreaming for the creative pursuit it is. In fact, experts think daydreaming might be the neurological equivalent of filing – and that daydreaming children are simply those with a lot to process. Thirteen-year-old Charlotte’s tendency to let her mind drift in the haunting Charlotte Sometimes can certainly be explained in this way. After her first night in her new boarding school, Charlotte wakes up to find she’s travelled back in time. She’s still at the same school, but she’s now a girl called Clare and the year is 1918. Twenty-four hours later, she wakes up as Charlotte again. Charlotte and Clare – both motherless, both with a younger sister – spend alternate days as each other with, at first, no one noticing but them.

Life quickly becomes very challenging. When Clare is set homework in 1918, it’s Charlotte who has to hand it in the next day; and when Charlotte agrees to be Susannah’s best friend in 1963, she must find a way to update Clare. As the horrors of the First World War invade both their lives, the day-to-day stresses mount. Soon teachers and friends are complaining that Charlotte’s attention always seems to be elsewhere – and there’s only the reader to empathise. Full of the small details that children notice – such as Charlotte’s first, surprised sight of freckled legs on one of her roommates; or the tired ‘stretched’ feeling she gets in her eyes when she’s overwhelmed – this story will show the daydreamer in your midst that time staring into space is time well spent.⁴

CURE FOR GROWN-UPS

Mr Daydream ROGER HARGREAVES

If you’re unconvinced, read how Jack is whisked off by the cloud-shaped Mr Daydream during class and taken on a quick world tour. They go to Africa, Australia, the North Pole and the Wild West before Jack is snapped back to reality by the sound of the teacher calling his name. Who wouldn’t rather travel to those places than be in a classroom?

SEE ALSO: about, what’s it all? • adventure, needing an • bored, being • short attention span

deafness

In the early years, picture books with strong, bold illustrations, featuring characters with expressive faces – allowing kids to ‘see’ the story, if not hear it – are imperative. Once a child is reading themselves, they’ll need the company of others who know what it’s like to deal with prejudice, hearing aids and trying to lip-read the expressionless Mr Spock on TV.⁵

THE TEN BEST BOOKS FOR DEAF KIDS

Voices in the Park ANTHONY BROWNE

Pumpkin Soup HELEN COOPER

Freddie and the Fairy JULIA DONALDSON, ILLUSTRATED BY KAREN GEORGE

The Deaf Musicians PETE SEEGER AND PAUL DUBOIS JACOBS, ILLUSTRATED BY R GREGORY CHRISTIE

The Time It Took Tom STEPHEN TUCKER, ILLUSTRATED BY NICK SHARRATT

El Deafo CECE BELL

Mundo and the Weather-child JOYCE DUNBAR

Whisper CHRISSIE KEIGHERY

Feathers JACQUELINE WOODSON

Miss Spitfire SARAH MILLER

SEE ALSO: different, feeling • friends, finding it hard to make • heard, not feeling • understood, not being

death, fear of

Drop Dead BABETTE COLE

Badger’s Parting Gifts SUSAN VARLEY

Tuck Everlasting NATALIE BABBITT

Ways to Live Forever SALLY NICHOLLS

For some, it’s a gradual dawning. For others, the realisation that we’re all going to die one day comes in a sudden shock of understanding. Grown-ups often shy away from exploring the after-tremors. But the more you can keep a child company as they grapple with their questions – where do you go when you die? who will die first, them or you? is it possible to die before you’re old? – the better their chances of reconciling themselves to the inevitability of death, and living a life not overly shadowed by the fear of it.

A light touch is very welcome, of course, and for that look to Babette Cole, fearless doyenne of picture books that dare to go where others fear to tread.⁶ In Drop Dead, a brother and sister ask their grandparents why they’re such ‘bald old wrinklies’. Their good-humoured elders explain that they weren’t always like this and proceed to take their grandchildren on a whistle-stop tour of their lives – which, by anyone’s standards, have not been dull. Cole’s lively illustrations show the pair of them careering downhill in their runaway pram as babies, racing their motorbikes at sixteen, experimenting with cigarettes at eighteen, dancing on the rooftops at twenty-one, and leaping off the backs of horses as a stuntman and film star in their respective, glamorous careers (having both failed to get steady jobs as scientists). Old age has seen them start to shrink, forget things and wear false teeth – but they still have the occasional OAP adventure (parachuting with their Zimmer frames, for example). And even though they’ve dodged death many times in their lives, they will go ‘bonk’ eventually. Everyone’s left with a smile at the end.

Another way to soften the shock is to explore how we continue to feel the presence of our loved ones in our lives after they’ve died – as shown in Badger’s Parting Gifts. Dependable and kind, Badger is missed terribly by his friends. But then, one by one, they recall something special about him. Mole remembers how Badger once made him a mole paper chain. Frog remembers how Badger taught him to skate. Their reminiscences, brought to life with intricate watercolour illustrations, fill the mourners – and us – with happy affection for this wise, generous friend. Whether you prefer to tell a child that the dead hover nearby, continuing to wish us well, or that they live on through the gifts they leave behind, this book will bring something warm and positive into the conversation.

For slightly older children, the profound Tuck Everlasting makes a case for death as a positive force in our lives. When ten-year-old Winnie stumbles upon a radiant boy named Jesse Tuck sitting under a tree, she asks him how old he is. ‘I’m one hundred and four,’ comes the unexpected reply. Winnie brushes off his remark – as she does Jesse’s insistence that ‘something terrible’ will happen to her if she drinks from the stream beneath the tree. But when Jesse’s older brother Miles and mother Mae turn up and proceed to hijack Winnie, tossing her on the back of their horse and racing back to their house with her, she begins to take their stories more seriously. She discovers that the stream beneath the tree is a magic stream and the whole family of Tucks became immortal when they drank from it, stuck at the same age forever. Knowing how hard it’ll now be for Winnie to resist drinking from the stream herself, they are determined to persuade her not to – and they have till morning to do so. Only Jesse, yearning for a friend with whom to spend his endless life, takes the opposite stand.

The arguments against immortality are posed in a way that’s direct and easy for children to grasp: life is dependent on death for its shape and meaning, they say, and one gets weary being alive forever. It’s the lonely, sad figure cut by Pa Tuck that’s most convincing. ‘If I knowed [sic] how to climb back on the wheel, I’d do it in a minute,’ he says. ‘You can’t have living without dying . . .’ Whether Winnie will drink from the stream herself at seventeen and become Jesse’s eternal mate, or age and die like everyone else, makes this book impossible to put down. Is it better to live fully, but briefly, or to exist forever, unchanging? Her decision is one that readers will never forget.

Many teens prefer not to think about death at all, for these are the years of invincibility. But events around them may force them to. Sam, the eleven-year-old hero of the heart-wrenching Ways to Live Forever, has leukaemia and knows he’s going to die sooner rather than later. Turning his curiosity on death itself, he writes endless lists – lists of questions, such as ‘How do you know when you’re dead?’ and lists of ways to ‘live forever’, such as ‘Become a vampire’ and ‘Marry a Greek goddess’. He even writes lists of things he’d like to happen when he’s dead, such as his sister inheriting his bedroom and his parents not being too sad.

We defy anyone to read this story without a lump in their throat. Sam is more courageous than either his parents or his sister, and his sense of humour holds out beyond his passing, written into the notes he leaves behind. He wants his family to be a little bit sad, but not so sad that they can’t remember him without being devastated; and it’s this, the art of being happy despite the knowledge that death awaits us and everyone we love, that this story inspires teens to master.

SEE ALSO: about, what’s it all? • anxiety • death of a loved one • death of a pet • life-threatening illness • worrying

death of a loved one

Nothing is harder than the death of someone we love,⁷ whatever our age. Seeing a fictional character going through a parallel loss – whether of a grandparent, parent, sibling or friend – can offer a safe way to explore the complex and bewildering emotions and help support a child through the different stages of grief. In all cases, it is vital to read a book closely yourself before sharing it with a bereaved child.

THE TEN BEST BOOKS TO HELP DEAL WITH BEREAVEMENT

Everett Anderson’s Goodbye LUCILLE CLIFTON, ILLUSTRATED BY ANN GRIFALCONI

The Paper Dolls JULIA DONALDSON, ILLUSTRATED BY REBECCA COBB

Cry, Heart, But Never Break GLENN RINGTVED, ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLOTTE PARDI

Are You Sad, Little Bear? RACHEL RIVETT, ILLUSTRATED BY TINA MACNAUGHTON

River Boy TIM BOWLER

A Greyhound of a Girl RODDY DOYLE⁸

Two Weeks with the Queen MORRIS GLEITZMAN

The Thing about Jellyfish ALI BENJAMIN

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece ANNABEL PITCHER

Batman: A Death in the Family JIM STARLIN, MARV WOLFMAN AND GEORGE PÉREZ

	CURES FOR GROWN-UPS		The Heart and the Bottle OLIVER JEFFERS
	Pockety FLORENCE SEYVOS, ILLUSTRATED BY CLAUDE PONTI

The loss of a grandparent or parent for one generation is the loss of a parent or partner for another. For the grown-up who has had to put their grief on hold while looking after others, we offer Oliver Jeffers’s moving story about numbness – and becoming un-numb. For the grown-up who has lost their life partner, we offer Pockety, the beautiful story of a tortoise coming to terms with the loss of her soulmate, Thumb.

SEE ALSO: anger • depressed parent, having a • depression • sadness

death of a pet

SEE: pet, death of a

depressed parent, having a

Broken Soup JENNY VALENTINE

15 Days Without a Head DAVE COUSINS

Kids in this situation are likely to find themselves baffled by the neglectful behaviour of their parent. Reading a story featuring a grown-up behaving in a similar way – with the illness described and named – may turn on a lightswitch in their head.

When, in Broken Soup, fifteen-year-old Rowan’s elder brother Jack drowns in a tragic accident, her stricken parents respond in different ways: her father by walking out, her mother by taking to her bed. This leaves Rowan to look after her eight-year-old sister, Stroma, and attempt to keep a semblance of normality. Rowan does her best, bringing her mother food, and trying not to bother her too much – because when her mother does emerge, she’s moody and unpredictable. When she meets Harper, an easygoing American boy travelling the world in a revamped ambulance, she has something else to think about apart from her miserable mum. Meanwhile, the girls’ father hovers on the edge, doing his best to avoid the remnants of his family and the emotions that come with them (see: parents who can’t talk about emotions, having). But when their mother makes a failed suicide attempt, their father finally sees that his family needs him and steps into the breach. Rowan finds that her complicated family is actually rather wonderful. Teens will appreciate the illustration of how even a capable girl like Rowan can’t be expected to manage it all alone.

Another coper – a boy this time – is fifteen-year-old Laurence in 15 Days Without a Head. Laurence’s mother, a single parent, has taken on two jobs to make ends meet, one at the chippy down the road, and one as a cleaner. This means she has to get up at 5am, leaving Laurence to get his six-year-old brother, Jay, to school before going to school himself. Sometimes his mother doesn’t make it out of bed at all – or doesn’t make it back from the night before till two days later – in which case Laurence has to do her cleaning shift too and never gets to school at all. So when she fails to come home one evening, it’s not a huge surprise.

But once ‘Whensday’ becomes ‘Blursday’ and Blursday becomes ‘Lieday’, things start to get desperate. Stomachs are complaining, cockroaches are crawling around the kitchen, and the teachers are beginning to comment on Laurence’s propensity to fall asleep at his desk (see: daydreaming, being accused of; over-tired, being). Eventually Laurence is so desperate for cash that he dons one of his mum’s dresses and a wig and totters down to the post office in a pair of her shoes to try to withdraw money from her account. How the brothers bring their mother back from her self-imposed exile we will not reveal, but this tragicomic story shows that while trying to pretend everything’s OK is admirable, depression is generally too big a problem for anyone to solve by themselves.

SEE ALSO: parents, having • parents, too busy • parents who are splitting up, having • sibling, having to look after a little • unwell parent, having an

depression

The Red Tree SHAUN TAN

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble WILLIAM STEIG

Virginia Wolf KYO MACLEAR, ILLUSTRATED BY ISABELLE ARSENAULT

Painful as it is to think of children suffering from serious depression, it does happen. If you know a child who seems to be in a dark, locked-in place, attempting to cheer them up with jolly stories will probably just leave them feeling more isolated and out of sync with the world. Show them they’re not alone – and that you’re prepared to hold their hand in this dark place – by sharing stories that don’t attempt any simple fixes but reflect back how they might feel, and show that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

The Red Tree is about a little girl who wakes up with the feeling that she has nothing to look forward to and that nobody understands. Shaun Tan’s skilful illustrations capture the atmosphere of depression in ways that perhaps only images can: being stuck inside a thin-necked bottle and left on a pebbly beach in the rain, for instance; or standing on a chair in an empty field with a jumble of letters spilling, unheard, to the ground. There are no pat solutions, but the story ends on the image of a red tree sprouting from the floor of the little girl’s bedroom, its glow lighting up her face. At last, there’s a glimmer of hope, life, colour . . . and her face bears a little smile.

The author and illustrator William Steig believed that art, including children’s books, helps us to know life in a way that ‘still keeps the mystery of things’. His own books very much live up to this. What meaning we’re intended to draw from the events in Sylvester and the Magic Pebble is not clear, but by the end we know we’ve shared something about how trapped and helpless we can all sometimes feel. Sylvester, a young donkey, loves to collect unusual pebbles and one day he finds a flaming red one, round as a marble. To his delight, he discovers it’s a magic pebble: as long as he’s holding it, his wishes come true. He rushes home to show his parents – but on the way he comes face to face with a hungry lion and, in a panic, he wishes himself into a rock.

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he realises his mistake. The pebble is now lying on the ground beside him but, as a rock, he has no way of picking it up; and without touching the rock, he cannot wish himself back to being Sylvester. Indeed, as a rock he is completely powerless – he can’t shout for help, or even let his parents know he’s him.

It doesn’t take long before he plunges into despair. With nothing else to do, Sylvester spends most of his time asleep, surfacing for brief moments only to remember all over again his seemingly endless plight – a state that shares much with depression. The pictures, in simple, bright colours, show the rest of the world going on without him, blue skies or grey. For a whole year, Sylvester is trapped (see: stuck). We feel not just for Sylvester, but also for his parents, whose grief Steig presents without sentimentality: they have lost their boy; nothing could be worse. But they haven’t forgotten what he was like, and they haven’t stopped loving him – and it’s their love, in the end, that leads them back to him. This book shows that however trapped and unlike themselves a child may feel, their special grown-ups still love them and want nothing more than for them to get better.

Siblings and friends of depressed children may find it hard to understand the change in the behaviour of their brother, sister or friend – and how to tread the fine line between intruding too much and leaving too much alone. In Virginia Wolf, a picture book inspired by the relationship between the depressive novelist and her artist sister, Vanessa, we see what it’s like from a sister’s point of view. ‘One day my sister Virginia woke up feeling wolfish,’ it begins – and there, in a lovely bedroom full of books, we see a pair of wolf’s ears sticking out from under the duvet. In this lupine state, Virginia finds even the sound of the birds too loud – and can’t bear the bright yellow of Vanessa’s favourite dress. Soon, her mood is bringing everyone else in the house down, too: ‘Up became down . . . Gloom became doom.’ Vanessa doesn’t give up trying to think of ways she can help, and eventually her artistic skills come to the rescue. Happily, there’s no second ‘o’ in this Virginia’s last name, allowing us to separate her in our minds from her real-life counterpart who, in the end, was less fortunate. Not only does this Virginia stop feeling wolfish but she becomes so much better she feels rather ‘sheepish’ . . . Isabelle Arsenault’s delicate artwork, taking us from the smudged darkness of depression to an optimistic garden vision of ‘Bloomsberry’, complete with floating petals and leaves that say ‘hush’ in the wind, brings with it the assurance that the dark mood in the house will eventually lift and a depressed sibling or friend will return to being themselves.

SEE ALSO: anxiety • heard, not feeling • indoors, spending too much time • sadness • screen, glued to the • suicidal thoughts • understood, not being • worrying

detention

SEE: punished, being

diary, catching someone else reading your

SEE: alone, wanting to be left • betrayal

die, where do we go when we?

SEE: about, what’s it all? • god, wondering if there is a

different, feeling

Giraffes Can’t Dance GILES ANDREAE, ILLUSTRATED BY GUY PARKER-REES

Elmer DAVID MCKEE

Wonder RJ PALACIO

The Chrysalids JOHN WYNDHAM

Perhaps they’re taller than everyone else, or they’re left-handed, or they speak with a lisp. Perhaps they live in a TV-less home, or in a treehouse, or with a dozen parakeets. If a small child you know feels different from others, read them the delightful Giraffes Can’t Dance.

Gerald the giraffe cannot for the life of him dance; and every year at carnival time, when everyone else is shaking their booty, he’s left feeling awkward and apart (see: tall, being). When he tries to join in on his long, gangly legs, the others jeer; and Gerald retreats into the jungle to look at the moon and mope (see: alone, wanting to be left). There he meets a cricket who tells him that everyone can dance – but that ‘Sometimes when you’re different, you just need a different song.’ For children mocked for their difference (see: bullied, being), the vision of Gerald strutting his stuff in his own unique way can’t fail to raise morale. Tell your child that ‘normal’ is nothing more than what everyone happens to be used to – and ‘different’ just means the next new thing.

Sometimes what makes a child different turns out to be their strongest asset – and they just need the chutzpah to carry it off. Take Elmer the patchwork elephant. With his gorgeous hide of coloured squares and tendency to play the clown, Elmer is adored by the other elephants. But Elmer doesn’t like being different. One day he runs away and rolls himself in grey berry juice – then goes back to find out what it’s like being ordinary. It’s obvious to even the littlest child that Elmer’s coat is special – and Elmer sees it too, in the end. Kids brought up on Elmer will associate difference with being more delightful than being the same as everyone else.

Few of us will ever have to deal with feeling as different as ten-year-old August in the extraordinary Wonder. We’re never told exactly what August’s face looks like, but we know he was born with a cleft palate, that he has a hole in the roof of his mouth, that he doesn’t really have ears, and his eyes are further down his face than they’re supposed to be. ‘Whatever you’re thinking,’ he tells us on page one with a mixture of honesty, bravery and humour we come to know well, ‘it’s probably worse.’

So far, August has been home-schooled by his mother, but now he’s facing his first day of school (see: home-schooling; school, being the new kid at). Both August’s parents and his older sister Via (a lovely model of supportive sisterhood) have their hearts in their mouths as they watch him go in on the first day – a ‘lamb to the slaughter’, in his father’s words – and we do, too. Everyone’s fears are largely borne out. The other kids either stare at August or look then quickly avert their eyes – and even Mrs Garcia wears an overly ‘shiny’ smile. One of his classmates, Julian, makes a cruel reference to the deformed Darth Sidious in Star Wars. But when Jack, a popular, funny boy, comes and sits in the empty seat next to him, our hearts swell. Jack isn’t afraid to ask August why he can’t get plastic surgery. ‘Hello?’ says August, pointing to his face. ‘This is after plastic surgery!’ Jack claps his hand to his forehead and laughs hysterically. ‘Dude, you should sue your doctor!’ he says, and soon the two of them are laughing so hard that the teacher has to ask them to switch seats. Finally, August has found a friend to whom his difference doesn’t matter.

August’s troubles are not over, though – and we watch him face a slew of trials, from falling out with Jack (see: betrayal) to feeling bad about taking his anguish out on his ever-understanding mum. But his extraordinary ability to put his hurt aside and be the one to bring humour into the situation wins him the respect of the entire school in the end. We defy kids to remain dry-eyed when Mr Tushman, the principal, picks out a certain pupil as the one whose ‘quiet strength has carried up the most hearts’ during the course of the year. Children who feel different will be moved and inspired by how much August has to deal with, and children in the vicinity of someone else who feels different will come away determined to ‘always . . . try to be a little kinder than is necessary’ from now on.

Teenagers keenly aware of what marks them out will love discovering The Chrysalids, set as it is in a future where people are expelled for being different. Mutations have become rife as a result of a nuclear explosion and anyone who deviates from the norm as described in the ‘Sunday Precepts’ (‘each leg shall be jointed twice and have one foot, and each foot five toes, and each toe shall end with a flat nail . . .’) is deemed a ‘Blasphemy’. David, our eleven-year-old hero who grows up during the course of the story, becomes aware that his ability to communicate telepathically is a mutation, and, terrified, does his best to hide it – not least from his own father. All over the walls of their house are quotations proclaiming ‘BLESSED IS THE NORM’ and ‘IN PURITY IS OUR SALVATION’.

When David meets Sophie, a girl with six toes, he is slowly drawn into life on the ‘Fringe’. Here, his gift for telepathy is useful – and he begins to enjoy it at last. David’s journey from his home in Waknuk, surrounded by zealots, to the shining city he has seen in his dreams and his telepathic ‘thought-shapes’, is a difficult one – but once there, he finds he can fully embrace his uniqueness. His eventual realisation that he’s one of the ‘New People’, destined to bring hope to humanity, will give heart to all teens in the process of discovering themselves.

SEE ALSO: adolescence • autism • bullied, being • disability, coping with • friends, finding it hard to make • heard, not feeling • loneliness • understood, not feeling

dinosaurs, crazy about

SEE: obsessions

dirty, not wanting to get

Mud MARY LYN RAY, ILLUSTRATED BY LAUREN STRINGER

Tarzan of the Apes EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

Small children can be surprisingly anti-dirt, scrubbing at the little felt-tip mark on their hand in the manner of Lady Macbeth and recoiling in horror when you suggest they plunge their hands into the cookie dough. Give them some examples of how getting dirty can be really, really nice – in the ‘mud, mud, glorious mud’ way made famous by Flanders and Swann.⁹ With its big double-page spreads slapped full of paint, the ‘gooey, gloppy, mucky’ magnificence of mud is generously celebrated in Mud. The narrative shows a child getting stuck right in as soon as the ground thaws after winter, squishing the mud between his clasped hands so that it oozes between his fingers. Delicious! He’s barefoot, too.

For older children who don’t want to get stains on their Converse, it’s time for a dose of Tarzan – punchy prose, breathless storylines and the acknowledgement of the deep desire lurking within us all to swing through the trees on a vine.¹⁰ The stories begin with Tarzan’s birth in the east African jungle, where his parents have been shipwrecked. When they die, he’s adopted by a tribe of great apes – in particular a she-ape named Kala, who takes pity on the scrawny, hairless monkey. As we watch this simian boy grow up, desperately trying to be part of his clan but slowly discovering what sets him apart, we’re treated to Burroughs’s musings on what it means to be a savage versus a civilised human being. Tarzan’s relationship to dirt lies at the heart of the exciting overlap. At night he sleeps embraced by the hairy Kala, and in the day he covers himself with the large, enveloping leaves of the ‘elephant’s ear’. His ablutions are jungle-drawn, of course, so Kala cleans his wounds with her tongue, and he swims in the river whenever he wants to see the colour of his skin again. In adolescence he has a moment of shame when, catching sight of his reflection in the river, he is shocked by his tiny nose and general hairlessness; and to make himself look more like his playmates, he cakes himself in mud. It’s too itchy to keep on for long, but we can see that mud is his friend and it makes him feel better for a while. Encourage children to revel in the clean dirt of the great outdoors, discover their own inner beast, and worry about what’s under their nails only when they come in from the jungle for tea.

disability, coping with

Susan Laughs JEANNE WILLIS, ILLUSTRATED BY TONY ROSS

Seal Surfer MICHAEL FOREMAN

Knife RJ ANDERSON

Accidents of Nature HARRIET MCBRYDE JOHNSON

Perhaps no group has been as inadequately or as cruelly represented in children’s literature as those with physical or mental disabilities. Thankfully this situation is now changing, with disabled characters starting to appear in leading roles with the same range of personality characteristics as we’d expect in non-disabled characters. For children coping with a disability and those in their peer group, Susan Laughs offers the all-embracing message that someone with a disability is no different from anyone else in any other respect. Like all children, Susan laughs, sings, swims and enjoys a piggy-back ride from time to time – as well as feeling all the usual emotions. It’s only on the very last page that we discover she uses a wheelchair as well.

Michael Foreman’s Seal Surfer, with its beautiful illustrations of the coast, focuses on the things that a disabled boy can do, rather than the things he can’t. We never know exactly what his disability is, except that he uses a wheelchair and sometimes crutches. We do know that he’s freer and happier in the water than on land. Lying on his tummy on his board, the boy spends whole days riding the waves with his friends.

One day, he and his grandfather witness a seal pup being born. As the boy watches the pup grow up, a special bond forms between them – and when he gets into trouble in the water, the seal comes to his rescue. The final image of the boy, now grown himself and sitting by the sea with his own grandchildren, is full of optimism. Give this to children with a disability to inspire them to find the medium in which they excel.

An ancient, fairy-inhabited oak tree at the end of someone’s garden may not seem a likely setting for a Young Adult story featuring disability issues, but Knife – the first in the Faery Rebels series – tackles the subject in a bold, refreshing way. The ‘oaken folk’ have been steadily depleted of their magical powers and vitality over the last few hundred years as a result of a virus known as ‘the silence’. They do their best to avoid humans too, believing them to be an additional threat to their survival, but when Knife – a young and feisty hunter fairy – notices a young man moving around the garden in a large silver throne on wheels, she’s intrigued. She discovers that Paul was all set for a brilliant career as a rower before losing the use of his legs in an accident; and when he attempts to drown himself in the pond, Knife temporarily assumes human form so that she can drag him to safety.

Paul doesn’t thank her at first – he had wanted to be left to die. But as he and Knife get to know one another, enjoying conversations about art and creativity, he begins to appreciate life again. They even discover an intriguing form of interspecies love. The segues from fantasy to reality are handled well; as is the deft dismissal of the tired trope that those with disabilities may be more likely to see their lives as not worth living. When faced with the choice of regaining his full mobility but losing the love of Knife in the process, Paul chooses to remain disabled. That having a perfectly functioning body is not a pre-requisite for happiness is the joyous message, here declared convincingly and without sentimentality.

Accidents of Nature offers a harder-hitting exploration of what it’s like to be disabled, through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Jean. Jean, who has cerebral palsy, arrives at Camp Courage in her wheelchair, dropped off by her loving parents. Her mum and dad have always contrived to keep things as ‘normal’ for Jean as they can, making light of her disability and ignoring it whenever possible. But at the ten-day camp she meets Sara, who has a very different approach. Sara calls the place ‘Crip Camp’, and she names Jean ‘Spazzo’. Suddenly it is as if Jean has been awakened from a dream: how can she be truly herself if she doesn’t embrace her difference?

Together, she and Sara plot to overthrow the regime at the camp, calling on all the ‘crips’ to come together and ‘stomp out normalcy’. When they take over the talent contest, the camp coordinators are horrified, and the ‘norms’ in the audience – the mums and dads and sisters and brothers – squirm with discomfort. But for the girls their political coup is a triumph. By reclaiming these pejorative terms, they’ve helped to remove their slur. Jean is left elated and, for the first time, proud of her differences.

SEE ALSO: different, feeling • frustration • understood, not feeling

disappointment

Zen Shorts JON J MUTH

Journey to the River Sea EVA IBBOTSON

Most childhoods are littered with disappointments: closed ice-cream shops, no-show playmates, the wrong birthday present, or none at all (see: presents). Often there’s nothing to be done except swallow the disappointment and move on. The story-within-the-story in Zen Shorts – featuring Stillwater, the giant Zen panda¹¹ – will help.

Michael, the eldest of the three siblings who live next door to Stillwater, worries about climbing trees. Quite reasonably, he suggests it would be bad to fall out and break a limb. ‘Maybe,’ is Stillwater’s unexpected reply. In explanation, the panda delivers – in ‘a slight panda accent’¹² – a Zen fable about a peasant farmer. When his horse runs away, the farmer’s neighbours bemoan it as terribly bad luck. ‘Maybe,’ shrugs the farmer. When his horse turns up the next day with two wild horses in tow, the neighbours tell him how lucky he is, after all. ‘Maybe,’ he says. When his son falls off one of the wild horses and breaks his leg, he gives the same response. The broken leg turns out to indirectly save the young man’s life. ‘I get it,’ says Michael. ‘Maybe good luck and bad luck are all mixed up. You never know what will happen next.’ This lovely epiphany, clear enough for children to understand, will not only dislodge the disappointment but open up the possibility of rescuing the moment itself.

Learning to bounce back from setbacks and make the best of things is surely one of life’s most valuable skills. Maia, the heroine of Journey to the River Sea, models the skill to a T. When, still mourning the death of her parents, she is sent to live with distant cousins on a rubber plantation in Brazil, Maia has great hopes for her exotic new home. She can’t wait to be surrounded by luxuriant jungle, colourful parrots, butterflies ‘the size of saucers’ and wise natives who can heal with plants. Most of all, she’s excited about her new family, the Carters, whose twin girls, Beatrice and Gwendolyn, are her own age.

The rainforest lives up to all her expectations. But she could not have been more wrong about the Carters, who are ignorant bigots so afraid of catching something from the wildlife around them that they live in a haze of Lysol. It transpires they had only taken Maia in for the money. ‘It’s not quite like I thought it would be, is it?’ Maia says to her tough-but-true governess, Miss Minton, with heartbreaking understatement. But instead of allowing the disappointment to push her into despair, Maia gathers up her courage, pokes her head out the window and hears a familiar, whistled tune . . . Her discovery of a life even more full of wonder and unexpected friendship than she had hoped for leaves readers with the conviction that disappointments may, in fact, be new adventures in disguise.