Tag: #KeepKidsReading

For my final #KeepKidsReading book review I would love to share with you a really wonderful book by a debut author, published by Usborne, who also happens to be local to me – Manchester based. Kimberly Whittam is a school teacher who has written a book for and about quieter shy children:

“Children who don’t raise their hand in class even though they know the answer, who don’t join in class discussion even though they’ve got something to say and children who are so, so talented and want to try out for the school play or join the school sports team and who are just too afraid to join in.”

Kimberly Whittam https://youtu.be/I8gtYq9zXu8

Many of us will recognise this child – that was me and it has at times been my own children, and certainly many children I know. Everyone is encouraged now to be loud and proud, to speak their truth and not be afraid of offending anyone, nor crave to be liked. But too often the people who say this have no idea how agonisingly difficult that can be. They were not “that” child. 

Storm Williams is twelve years old and in year seven at Daisy Mill Academy. She likes to keep a low profile and has clearly found settling in very challenging. Her best friend from primary school, Zarrish, was placed in a different form, leaving Storm feeling bereft, and she lives for the lessons where forms are mixed, such as PE, and they can be together. To make matters worse, Storm’s elder brother Isaiah is in year eleven and is an outgoing high-achiever, Head Boy and heavily involved in extra-curricular activity. All the teachers refer to Storm at “Isaiah’s little sister”; she has a lot to live up to. At the start of the book, Storm’s family faces a domestic drama – kitchen renovations lead to a burst pipe which makes their house uninhabitable – and the family has to move in with Storm’s grandma. 

It is during one of the PE lessons that Storm finds she has a previously undiscovered talent that she enjoys. The group begins athletics lessons and Storm finds that she is a very fast sprinter. The PE teacher encourages her to attend athletics practice and tells her he wants her to participate in an inter-school competition. The thought of going alone makes Storm feel queasy, but she decides that she will do it if her friend Zarrish comes along too. At first Zarrish says she will, but lets her friend down. Zarrish has become increasingly involved with a new girl at school, Melissa, who she was initially asked to ‘buddy’. But Melissa is sullen, manipulative and difficult and it soon becomes clear that she is pulling Zarrish away from Storm, persuading her into rule-breaking at school and deceitful and unkind behaviour. 

Storm finds herself in turmoil; lacking the confidence to participate in athletics without her friend’s support, but also finding for the first time that she excels at something and enjoys it, makes her reassess all of her assumptions about school life up to that point. 

Storm does find her voice and her niche and the difficult challenges she faces turn out to be a true turning point for her. She faces them with courage and with the support of her family and finds the strength of character to turn her back on what she knows to be wrong (treating people badly) and embracing doing what she loves, finding out a lot about herself along the way.

Storm is a lovely character and the situations she faces in this super book, the people around her at school, the teachers and the family situations (being mortified by her parents’ very public sense of fun!) will be familiar to lots of young people. 

Highly recommended for 9-12 year olds, or even a little older. 

I have a vague recollection of reading some books by Rumer Godden when I was a child, though unfortunately I cannot remember any specific titles. I was reminded of her a couple of years ago when reading fellow blogger Brona’s Books, who had a Rumer Godden reading week around the time of the author’s birthday. By coincidence I had happened to pick up an early edition of The Doll’s House in my local secondhand bookshop around the same time. Unfortunately, I did not get around to reading the book then and it has been sitting on my TBR shelf for too long. I decided to make it my ‘Off the TBR shelf’ book for June and now seems like a good time to review it as I am focusing on my #KeepKidsReading week. 

Rumer Godden was prolific and published over sixty books in a writing career that spanned seven decades. She wrote for both adults and children and also wrote poetry and non-fiction. A number of her books were adapted for film and television, most recently Black Narcissus which was released as a BBC mini-series in 2020. She was born in Britain but grew up in India where her father worked for a shipping company. 

The Doll’s House was Godden’s first book for children (published in 1947) and was turned into a film for children’s television in 1984. Godden wrote a series of books about dolls drawing parallels between their plight as passive and without agency, and the life of children, for whom adults make decisions, without necessarily consulting them. 

The Dolls’ House is a short book, easily consumed by an adult in one sitting, but I tried to read as a child would, or as a child might have it read to them, one short chapter at a time. The story concerns the fate of four dolls who live together as a family – Mr Plantaganet, Birdie, his ‘wife’, Tottie, a girl-child doll, and Apple, a younger boy-child doll. They are the toys of sisters Emily and Charlotte, and live in shoe boxes, but wish for a house of their own. Their wishes come true and the two sisters acquire an old Victorian dolls’ house which once belonged to their grandmother. With the help of a family friend they clean, repair and update the interior and the furnishings. Unfortunately, the dolls’ house comes with an unwelcome addition, a china doll called Marchpane, who is also very old. Marchpane would have been an expensive and precious doll in her day, unlike the Plantaganets, and is both haughty and cruel. When she is brought to live with them all she seems to cast a spell over the elder of the two sisters, Emily, and gradually, the Plantaganets are sidelined and ousted from the better rooms in their new home. 

On the surface, this is a simple story, but it explores notions of class, fairness, kindness and justice in ways that will be easily understood by children. It was a real throw-back reading this charming little book. The language is a bit old-fashioned, but I think it could still appeal to younger children, between about five and seven years old, perhaps shared with a grandparent, who will be able to bring their own memories into a telling of the story. 

I was first given this book as a child in primary school (I still have my copy!) and though I recall reading it, I’m not sure what I thought about it at the time. I read it again (along with the sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass) while I was an English literature undergraduate (this time exploring the symbolism and the place of the work in the history of literature). It is easy to forget that this book was written in the Victorian era (it was first published in 1865), a time when children were definitely meant to be seen and not heard. Alice is nearly subversive when thought about in that context!

I came across the audiobook recently, read, to my excitement, by the marvellous actor Jodie Comer, who comes from Liverpool but who seems able to mimic just about any accent. As I had a longish solo car journey, I thought it would be the perfect accompaniment. I was slightly disappointed that Jodie Comer read it in a (perfectly executed) received pronunciation – fitting to the book’s period, but I think it might make it sound somewhat dated to a modern child’s ear. There was a wide range of other accents too though, various northern and west country voices for the animals. 

I listened in one sitting and it really is a marvel. I had forgotten just how many different ‘episodes’ there are! I was reminded of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, which I think draws on the legacy that was established by Alice. I am currently watching season three of the BBC television adaptation of that series (which is further than I have read in the books) and I am struck by the succession of ‘worlds’ (or multiverses as I think it would be more fashionable to call them). Alice goes through a series of changes as she passes through the different areas of Wonderland and encounters different animals, some familiar, some fantasy, and different forms of people (such as the royal playing cards). As an adult, I have to admit that I have found this a little tedious at times – there is a kind of impatience in my watching/listening. But, of course, children have a much greater tolerance for this sort of thing and it’s probably a strong argument against bingeing. It’s simply too rich!

Listening to Alice, my absolute favourite section was the mock turtle’s story. I love the nonsense logic and I think the puns will make children laugh as much as I did. In performance terms, Jodie Comer had great fun with the Queen of Hearts and the King and the repetitions of “off with his head” got increasingly melodramatic. Again, children will love the anarchic humour.

Alice was a reaction to the constraints placed on children and the virtual denial of childhood in the late nineteenth century. Alice refers to the events going on around her as “curiouser and curiouser”, but of course, she is also curious, drinking potions and eating biscuits and mushrooms, even though she knows this is against every rule she has been taught, just for the hell of it, to see what happens. The message here is that curiosity is rewarded with adventures and rules can be broken…sometimes!

Some parts of this book may well feel dated to 21st century ears, and I was listening out for things that might offend, in the way that some have been offended by Roald Dahl recently, but Alice is much more fantastical, in my view. Its entertainment value for younger children remains strong, however, and Alice’s innocence still rings true.