Stories to grow on
Diana and John Lampen say a book is for life… not just for Christmas, and offer some attractive recommendations for the bookshelf
Books are low on many children’s Christmas wish lists, but we continue to give them as presents. Nothing else has such power to take children into the lives of other people and enlarge their sympathies. The quality of writing for children has never been higher. Here we offer suggestions of presents for children who are ‘different’ and feel ostracised; but many others will also enjoy and learn from them. Each book celebrates individuality and touches on very painful feelings, while showing how love can heal them.
Something Else by Kathryn Cave is a funny picture story for five – to seven-year-olds, featuring a strange little creature who lives alone and longs to be friends with others. But everything he does, whether playing or painting, they find odd and so reject him. When someone wants to be his friend, at first he is tempted to treat the newcomer as he was treated (a situation with real-life parallels!). Luckily he realises his mistake just in time, and all ends well, with a lovely twist at the end of the story.
For children of nine to twelve, we suggest Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terebithia. Ten-year-old Jess and Leslie are seen as ‘weird’ by their schoolmates, and Jess’s home life is unhappy. In a wood they imagine their own kingdom; but instead of its being their escape it helps them to deal imaginatively with their problems, including bullying. They play a mean but clever trick on the chief bully, but in facing up to their subsequent shame they are led to respond with compassion when she is humiliated. The shock of Leslie’s accidental death seems likely to drive Jess back into his loneliness; but, drawing on what she has taught him, he is reconciled to his family and recreates Terebithia for his little sister, whom he has always rebuffed before.
We were impressed by a recent novel for younger teenagers called Jessica’s Ghost by Andrew Norriss, about four very different young people who become friends. Each is a loner, and one has been dead for a year; she is the most isolated because nobody can see or hear her. Why the other three can do so and what links them all together is a mystery which the story gradually uncovers. It deals honestly and sensitively with the desperate unhappiness of being an outsider, including the temptation of suicide. But simultaneously it is a witty and glorious celebration of the value of individuality. It moves almost too easily to its happy ending; but there is a stunning unexpected climax when the time comes for Jessica to leave her friends.
But our favourite book for this age group is Quaking by Kathryn Erskine. Matt is a rebellious teenage girl, destined for an institution unless a final foster placement succeeds. She is angry, clever and sarcastic, but inwardly terrified of life. Her new carers are Quakers, and her first incredulous and scornful observations on Friends are sharp and funny, one of the delights of the book. Her foster-father Sam is as much an outsider as she. He tries to live out his faith in every aspect of his life, despite threats of violence in a very ‘redneck’ American town. The family have also adopted a severely disabled little boy (whom Matt calls ‘the Blob’) who will have his own role in facing down her bullies. Matt at first despises Sam, then laughs at him, and finally sees that his determination to be authentic offers her a solution to her own problems – but does she have the courage to adopt it?
These are four books which celebrate the power of friendship. They have the same message: it is in the ways we differ from one another that we are real, lovable and compassionate.
John is author of Peaceful Inside for children aged five to seven.
