We’re wading on through the feelings basket of books – and this time, it’s looking at feelings of sadness.
On the Way Home – Jill Murphy
This is an interesting book, by a familiar author – you may have seen her Worst Witch chapter books, and we’re also fond of the picture book Whatever Next. Murphy’s visual style is rich, encouraging you to linger over the illustrations.
In one sense, you could suggest this is also a book about fears – the book’s character Claire seems to be followed by various scary characters, as she makes her way home after hurting her knee.
As Claire meets friends along the route, the story changes, and the reasons for Claire’s poorly knee get more and more spectacular.
What’s effective is how the story changes when Claire gets home. We hear the truth about what happened, and, safe now, Claire can let go of her pretend fears for the real pain of the injury – and mum not being there.
Fortunately, Claire’s mum knows all the right things to do – including finding the biggest plaster to help make the poorly knee get better fast.
I enjoyed this book as a way to see how children respond differently to pain. Sometimes we are very much in touch with it, and there are tears.
Sometimes we have to bottle it up until we can get to a safe place, and Claire’s stories suggest how she dealt with her sadness until she could get home to mum.
Cheer up Your Teddy Bear, Emily Brown! – Cressida Cowell
Emily Brown is back on the case, this time dealing with feelings of sadness and loneliness. She and her rabbit friend Stanley meet the Tearful Teddybear, who is on his own in the toybox and feeling very sorry for himself.
Emily tries various cheering up techniques with the teddbybear, but none of them seem to work.
What’s interesting here is how Emily and Stanley also then become sad – an introduction to depression, and the impact of it on those around the person who is depressed.
The teddybear’s sadness is shown as rain throughout the book, and by the time Emily and Stanley are affected, there is a big black raincloud that washes out the pictures they were painting.
Emily is able to invoke a large red magical umbrella to keep them all out of the rain – and the teddybear goes on to discover not only that he is not alone, but that he can help himself to find ways to smile again.
We can’t always ‘fix’ sadness, but the message that there are others like us out there is a helpful one, as is the notion of positive thinking as having a place in how we respond to situations.
Sad Book – Michael Rosen, Quentin Blake
Fully up the scale of sadness is Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, dealing with the author’s loss of his son. This is not part of the basket of books I mentioned, but one I have looked through, and seemed appropriate to include here.
Bereavement is a difficult enough topic for anyone to deal with. To deal with the loss of a child, a whole step further. That Rosen does so through the means of a picture book with verse makes this a very special read, even though not an easy one.
This is one of the reasons that children’s literature is so important – because it does not shy away from the truly difficult topics. Something of the simplicity of a children’s book means that it cuts to the heart of what is important – as well as allowing plenty of space for the reader to respond in their own way.
I also read Goodbye Mog a while back, where the beloved Mog of Mog the Forgetful Cat ends her own journey – and then comes back to look in at her family to see how they are getting on.
I was initially shocked by it – we so rarely see death of main characters in children’s books – but then found it very helpful.
Given that children often experience death first through the loss of a well-loved pet, a book like Goodbye Mog offers a way into this situation – as well as something to turn to if our own junior readers find themselves in this position.
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There are many characters in children’s fiction who experience sadness along the path of a great adventure. I don’t wish to reduce the importance of that.
But I do want to acknowledge the everyday nature of sadness – and how an openness about it can often help us, and those around us. We may move on from it quickly, as Claire does, or more slowly, depending on the circumstance.
Finding ways to express the sadness – and ways to depict the sadness for others, so we understand – can be crucial in reducing a sense of isolation.
I’ve drawn on a wide range of expressions of sadness among the books I’ve mentioned. They are not all to be dived into at the same time.
But little by little, according to our own junior reader and their situations, we may find that old and kindly solace of books: that someone has been there before us, and that someone understands.