Posted on: 30/06/2019
It’s nearing the end of the school year and the promise of the summer holiday - those endless (hopefully) sun-lit days - is tantalisingly close. But first there are sports days, concerts and fetes to attend. There are also change-up days : teachers and their classes are matched-up for the next academic year and visits are made to new classes. Our children are another year older, some about to start school; some moving to KS2, others to secondary; we are another year older and the bittersweet feeling of an end that is also a beginning can be unsettling. So with this in mind, this month’s choice of literature is in keeping with the theme of changes and transitions. We have selected three newly/soon-to-be published chapter books that we think could aid transition in some way but also which explore how characters change and make transitions in terms of how they view themselves: The Adventures of Harry Stevenson by Ali Pye, Hotel Flamingo - Holiday Heatwave by Alex Milway and Jemima Small versus the Universe by Tamsin Winter.
(Simon and Schuster, 13th June 2019)
Not your usual main protagonist, Harry Stevenson is actually not a small boy but a guinea pig. Harry has a lovely daily routine of snoozing, snuggled up in a nest of hay; eating, napping, snacking, having lie-ins and midnight feasts… a pretty standard day-in-the-life of a guinea pig. But then when he awakes one morning to find an empty food bowl and ‘wheeeeeeekkkkkkks’ for his owner, events take an unexpected turn:
Billy Smith was Harry Stevenson’s owner. Billy was seven years old and he thought that Harry was the Best Thing Ever… Boy and guinea pig faced each other: nose to nose, freckle to whisker.
‘We’re going to live in the new flat, Harry,’ said Billy as he stroked Harry’s fur. ‘This is our last morning here.’
Harry Stevenson looked deep into Billy’s eyes. Although Harry could never be described as a clever animal, there was one subject in which he was a world-class expert: Billy. And right now Harry could sense something strange. Billy was feeling lots of different things, all at the same time. He was happy and sad, scared and excited. It was very odd!
Harry spends the morning watching as the family pack the flat up. He’s afraid; Billy has told him that at the new flat there is a garden and that Harry can play outside but he doesn’t much like the sound of ‘outside’. Then, when Billy moves Harry’s cage, having carefully secured the little guinea pig snuggly inside extra hay, Harry finds that he is outside and it’s not quite as scary as he’d thought it would be. There are delicious-looking dandelions too. Bravely, Harry wanders out of his cage to have a nibble but then realises his cage has gone and so has Billy and the rest of the Smith family. Harry Stevenson had been left behind!!!
A delightfully humourous tale about adventure, misadventure, adapting to change and making transitions, this would be perfect for 5-7 year-olds. What is so lovely is that there are two stories in this book which makes it good for children who are just beginning to independently access chapter books and would like to read more from the same series.
(Piccadilly Press, 13th June 2019)
It’s such a treat to read a sequel where there’s that sense of reunion with old friends! Issued with a dossier of ‘requirements’, Anna faces her biggest challenge yet: penguin royalty are en route for a week-long stay and have certain expectations. But given that a heat-wave is on its way, how will Anna keep the penguins cool, let alone ensure everything else is up to scratch? Actually, how will she keep her cool?
And whilst Anna is a character who has managed Hotel Flamingo through great change from being near derelict to vibrant, popular and filled with guests, there is trouble ahead. Mr Ruffian, bully-boy proprietor of the Glitz Hotel, is not amused in the slightest that the royal penguins have voted with their flippers and elected to choose Anna’s hotel rather than his for their annual stay. Storming into the hotel one morning, he threatens Anna:
‘You’re making a big mistake, taking my business, growled Mr Ruffian, pointing a manicured claw at Anna.
‘Mark my words, this is the biggest - THE ABSOLUTE BIGGEST- mistake you’ve ever made. I will make their stay impossible for you, if it’s the last thing I do.’
Mean, arrogant and spiteful, Ruffian wages a campaign against Anna and her team, attempting to sabotage the success of the royal visit. Sadly, it seems that his dreadful behaviour has worked: everything comes to a head when the surprise party that the hotel throws for penguin-queen Julieta, becomes a complete fiasco. However, all is not lost: clever Anna - a girl with mettle a-plenty - rumbles Ruffian and it turns out that the theme of change in this story is very much around change of opinion and a certain hotel guest who is able to transition too… (think: chameleon)
Perfect for children moving from year 2-3 but we know year 4’s who’ll love this too!
(Usborne 11th, July 2019)
I’d read a lot of spelling and vocabulary books over the past few weeks, but I didn’t know a word to describe that feeling you get when you know people are proud of you. It was like being filled with sunlight, the kind of sunlight that refracts across the horizon. And it made the hole inside my heart feel not so infinite.
Jemima Small cannot stand her name: physically she isn’t all that small and the irony isn’t lost on her peers who relentlessly bully and belittle her. Overweight, isolated and desperately sad that her mum left her and her older brother Jasper, life for Jemima is harder perhaps than it is for an average pre-teen. Then when the whole school is weighed under the guise of a maths investigation, Jemima is made to join Clifton Academy’s special healthy lifestyle club (dubbed ‘fat club’ by Jemima). Her shame at being ‘chosen’ for this club is palpable… but there is one thing - one huge thing - that could perhaps make allegedly too-big Jemima feel less-small: she is incredibly intelligent. So when her school announces that there’s to be a preliminary round for Brainiacs - a televised competition for super-brainy young people - Jemima takes the test and wins a place on to selection. But her confidence is further dented when her bully posts a video of Jemima at school camp online and then when Jemima and her brother uncover a family secret, we are left wondering whether Jemima will actually manage to take part in the competition at all.
Winter expertly explores the discord between a child who feels maligned and a self-loathing that’s desperately sad with such shiny brilliance from within that some young people just can’t see in themselves. This isn’t a story of an overweight child losing weight. That isn’t the point of it at all. It’s about self-esteem, self-worth and emotional shifts and changes a character makes as a narrative progresses. It is touchingly funny in places, too. And main bully rat-like Lottie obviously gets her comeuppance in the end too. There are themes of transition - yes - but also of self-discovery and respect for self and others.
We think that this is very cleverly researched and beautifully written and an incredibly important piece of literature about body image for children from year 6 and up.
Posted in: Literature Review
