My Two Blankets (Irena Kobold, illus by Freya Blackwood, Little Hare)

Cartwheel and her auntie have to leave their country because of a war, and end up in ‘this country to be safe’. The country feels strange, the people are strange, even the wind is strange, and the language is very strange; cold and hard, it makes Cartwheel want to stay under her old ‘blanket’ forever. This blanket is in fact a cocoon of Cartwheel’s own sounds and words, her own language. Eventually Cartwheel makes a friend and starts to learn a new language, ‘weaving’ a new blanket of sounds and words, and presumably, new experiences. Freya Blackwood has used two distinct palettes to express Cartwheel’s sense of loneliness—warm colours for Cartwheel’s old world, and cool, sombre colours for the new. This works very well, as do the shapes she uses to symbolise the new words, which look like origami shapes. This might be confusing for very young readers, but could generate interesting discussion about what words would look like, if we could actually see them. Blackwood’s illustrations always enhance and extend the text, and in this case they not only do that, but also bring the difficult, nebulous problem of deracination to life, making it accessible to young readers. This is recommended for children aged four and up.

Louise Pfanner is an author, illustrator and bookseller

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Category: Reviews