Roller-skating turns out to be much harder than it looks, and Astrid spends most of the first few days on the floor. On top of it all she has to walk home by herself, not having wanted to break the news to her mum that Nicole isn’t doing the camp with her. One day, she takes the plunge and skates home – and so begins her gradual transformation from Astrid, a girl with no particular ‘thing’ of her own except for being Nicole’s best friend, to the fit, fearless ‘Asteroid’, coasting the city streets with her new friend, Zoey. Sometimes, friendships simply run their course.
SEE ALSO: arguments, getting into • betrayal • feelings, hurt • forgive, reluctance to • friends, feeling that you have no • friends, finding it hard to make • loneliness • stand up for yourself, not feeling able to • umbrage, taking
betrayal
First it’s worth checking to see if the child in question really has been betrayed – or if they just think they have. For Lilly, the mouse in Kevin Henkes’s classic picture book, it’s the person (or rodent) she adores most in the world that has betrayed her – or so she believes. Lilly thinks so highly of Mr Slinger, a dude of a teacher who winks and says ‘Howdy’ each morning, that she does everything she can to be like him. One day she comes to school wearing a pair of movie-star sunglasses, just like his, and carrying a brand new purple plastic handbag that plays a tune when opened. She knows Mr Slinger will love her accessories as much as she does. But Mr Slinger doesn’t care for the jaunty tune singing out every five minutes in class, and confiscates both glasses and bag. Furious, Lilly draws Mr Slinger on a ‘Wanted’ poster . . . The teacher handles the situation beautifully; and watching Lilly go from outrage to humility as she realises she’s the one that needs to apologise is very helpful for children who have made the same mistake.
A betrayal of a real and shocking kind lies at the heart of the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the magical portal into the spellbinding Narnia series.4 Of the four siblings sent to the big house in the country to escape the Blitz,5 the youngest, Lucy, is the first to find her way through the fur coats and into the snowy forests of Narnia. There she meets a Faun called Mr Tumnus, who invites her for tea. None of her siblings believe her when she tells them where she’s been – after all, according to their sense of time, she’s only been gone a few minutes. So when, on her next visit, she finds that Edmund has followed her there, she’s excited and relieved. ‘The others will have to believe in Narnia now that both of us have been there. What fun it will be!’ she cries. But back in the house, Edmund – sick and guilty from eating so much of the White Witch’s Turkish Delight – claims to have no idea what she’s talking about.
This first betrayal is followed by a succession of others as, thoroughly hooked on Turkish Delight and keen to lord it over his elder brother, Peter, as King one day, Edmund becomes the evil queen’s spy. The shock of Edmund’s treachery is compounded by the contrast with Peter’s admirable loyalty. ‘We’ll still have to go and look for him,’ Peter says, as he realises the grave danger Edmund has put them all in. ‘He is our brother after all, even if he is rather a little beast.’ In Narnia, as in the real world, family and friends come first. Kids who have been betrayed will be inspired by Peter to react by being big, not bitter.
SEE ALSO: feelings, hurt • umbrage, taking
bicycle, learning to ride a
Those first shaky attempts at life on two wheels are hard enough without having to deal with the fears or taunts of those watching from the sidelines, too. It’s apt, then, that Duck on a Bike – in which Duck decides to have a go on an appealing little red bicycle – focuses more on the responses of the other animals in the farmyard than on how Duck’s doing himself. ‘He’s going to hurt himself if he’s not careful,’ frets the sheep. ‘You’re still not as fast as me,’ taunts the horse. But after the initial wobbles, Duck soars past them all gleefully, managing not to let them spoil his fun. Read this to a child, then let go of their saddle with a cheery smile.
THE TEN BEST BOOKS FOR KEEPING KIDS ON TWO WHEELS
SEE ALSO: confidence, lack of • pain, being in
birds and bees, wanting to know about the
SEE: sex, having questions about
blamed, being
Being blamed for something that isn’t your fault is a lonely business, and a child in this predicament will appreciate the solidarity of ten-year-old James in The Ghost of Thomas Kempe. When his family move to a cottage in the Oxfordshire countryside, James is soon aware that something very strange is going on. His dog barks at thin air, cups crash to the floor for no reason – and now he has