It gradually dawns on Harri that it’s what’s inside his trainers that he should be focusing on: a natural athlete, he can run faster than any of his peers. This moving story speaks to kids about many issues, including immigration (see: outsiders, distrust of), bullying (see: bullied, being) and peer pressure (see: peer pressure). But in the end it’s about seeing things in perspective. Acknowledge with the kids of your ken that it sometimes feels crucial to be seen wearing the right things. But that it’s even more crucial to keep their eye on the bigger picture.
SEE ALSO: peer pressure • things, wanting • worrying
celebrity, wanting to be a
With the current rash of TV talent shows, kid-hosted YouTube channels and the measuring of popularity by the number of likes and followers one has, it’s hardly surprising that modern children angle for celebrity status. The Strongest Girl in the World shows that hitting the big time doesn’t necessarily lead to contentment. When a friend gets his head stuck between the school railings (see: stuck), eight-year-old Josie discovers she has the power to bend metal. Experimenting with her new-found capabilities, she finds she can also lift tables, people, and even a double-decker bus. It doesn’t take long for someone to spot her money-spinning potential, and she and her family are soon being whisked off to New York by the sleazy Mr Two Suit to find fame and fortune. They find it; but, after much excitement, sensible Josie decides she’d rather live a quiet, happy life after all. Readers will love Josie’s adventurous spirit – and her ultimate choice.
An eye-opening exploration of celebrity from both the idol and the fan’s point of view is to be found in Rockaholic, in which teenage Jody is so obsessed with her rock idol, Jackson (from the fictional band The Regulators), that she’s listening to him on her headphones at her own grandfather’s funeral. When she kidnaps Jackson by accident – he having mistaken her Curly Wurly for a knife, no doubt as a result of the hallucinogens coursing through his veins – she and her best friend find themselves driving him to Jody’s house. The next thing she knows, her number-one fantasy man is unconscious in her bed, naked – and she’s washing him with baby wipes.
It turns out that Jackson loathes his fans and finds it pathetic that they spend their hard-earned cash on his concert tickets. In fact, he pours so much vitriol on Jody’s dream that she’s moved to push him off a bridge. No sooner has she done so than she has the dubious epiphany that if she can only help Jackson detox from the ‘blackberries’ he takes, he might turn out to be the god she imagined him to be after all . . . Thus begins the hilarious account of Jackson’s descent into the troughs of normality, which sees him being transported in a wheelie bin to Grandpa’s converted garage, going through cold turkey and being fed meals by Jody through the cat flap. High comedy, yes; but this story also sheds touching light on the topsy-turvy life of a fan, how much their gods mean to them, and how sometimes it takes a serious dose of life (and death) to help someone see what was staring them in the face all along.
SEE ALSO: precociousness • princess, wanting to be a • spoilt, being
chatterbox, being a
A great number of challenging personality traits can be slipped into a conversation with a child via the relevant Hargreaves character.3 From being messy to being scatterbrained, from being lazy to being mischievous – you name it, there’s a Mr Man (or, now, a Little Miss) whose raison d’être is to model that feature and invite a discussion about it. One of our favourites for curative purposes is Little Miss Chatterbox, the sister of Mr Chatterbox. If Mr Chatterbox can talk the hind leg off a donkey, Little Miss Chatterbox can talk all forty-two legs off a centipede.4 In the course of this story, she gets fired from four jobs – bank teller, waitress, hat shop attendant and secretary – for talking too much; and, one by one, Mr Happy, Mr Greedy, Little Miss Splendid and Mr Uppity are all left in a state of shell-shocked silence. The job she finally gets (we won’t spoil the surprise) is exactly the sort of brain-numbing punishment we would wish for her – except that she doesn’t notice it’s a punishment at all. The chatterbox in your midst will surely notice how unhappy the other characters become in this story, and with luck – ahem – they’ll not notice how pleased you look when they stop talking to read it.
SEE ALSO: questions, asking too many
cheering up, needing
After tears, there needs to be comfort. Guess How Much I Love You – a book more or less guaranteed to get a grown-up choked up, which is in itself a comforting spectacle for a child – is our favourite picture book for the job. Little Nutbrown Hare, ‘who was going to bed’, wants his Big Nutbrown Hare to guess how much he loves him – then tries to show him how much by spreading his arms as wide as he can. Of course, Big Nutbrown Hare can make his arms go wider, and his feet go higher; and as they continue to try and out-big the other with the size of their love, we get to see Little Nutbrown’s quivering whiskers and eager little tail take it all in: ‘“Hmm, that is a lot,” thought Little Nutbrown Hare.’ With their soft, white tummies and their delicate, worn-looking ears, these hares are about as irresistible as children’s book characters get – and the quiet rhythm of the prose will soothe and lull. That Little Nutbrown Hare never gets to hear the true extent of Big Nutbrown Hare’s love introduces your child to the gratifying concept that sometimes a grown-up’s love is just too big to describe.
Children who have, in some way, brought their upset on themselves will feel much better for getting to know Winnie-the-Pooh, loved as he so evidently is despite – and even because of – his foolishness. When Pooh gets stuck in the entrance to Rabbit’s burrow, he only has himself to blame. Full of the honey and condensed milk he wolfed down at Rabbit’s, without even having been invited to breakfast in the first place, his girth is now greater than the front entrance of the burrow. With his ‘North end’ poking into the woods, and his ‘South end’ still in Rabbit’s kitchen, he’s unable to move either in or out.
At first, Pooh tries to pretend there’s nothing wrong – that he’s ‘just resting and thinking and humming’ to himself. Then he gets cross and tries to lay the blame on someone or something else – in this case, Rabbit’s front door for not being wide enough. Sensibly, Rabbit doesn’t argue, but goes to fetch Christopher Robin – the equivalent of a grown-up in these stories. Christopher Robin gently chides Pooh for being a ‘Silly old Bear’, but in ‘such a loving voice’ and with such complete acceptance of his friend’s follies that everybody feels ‘quite hopeful again’ straight away.
It’s Rabbit who suggests they read aloud to Pooh while waiting for his stomach to deflate (although, ever the opportunist, he also suggests that he use Pooh’s back legs as a towel rail while he’s there). His kind suggestion (or perhaps it’s the prospect of no meals for a week) tips Pooh over the edge and, a tear rolling down his cheek, he asks to be read a ‘Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness’.10 If you respond to a child’s upset in much the same way as Christopher Robin does – gently chiding but in a loving voice and showing you