The Flower Garden: A Changi Secret (Claire Saxby, illus Lucia Masciullo, Walker)

Complex history becomes accessible to young readers when told through intimate, human stories; The Flower Garden: A Changi Secret uses this technique elegantly. CBCA-winning author Claire Saxby (Iceberg) and illustrator Lucia Masciullo (Go Home, Cat!) centre their book on a group of children in the World War II Changi camp who secretly stitch a quilt (a flower garden) for Mrs Ennis, a woman whose kindness has helped them endure the grim circumstances. Ideas of togetherness, determination and the comforts of creating are communicated through Saxby’s sparse prose and Masciullo’s ink-and-watercolour images, which capture the feeling of old photographs in the sepia-centred palette and sense of half-remembered lives. Masciullo’s visual style sits somewhere between Edward Ardizzone and Freya Blackwood, with a particular attention to minute details: one small sock scrunched around one small ankle and a girl spotting two tiny insects as she labours in the gardens. Saxby’s ability to distil historical fact into resonant, poetic imagery shines in phrases such as “dusk pulls in the breeze” and “we hide in cornered shadows”. The book will suit children aged 7 and up who are not yet ready for the textual density of other empathetic war narratives, such as Nicola Davies and Rebecca Cobb’s The Day War Came. While much of the historical context is largely elided, an Author’s note provides helpful background on the Changi internment camp and its POWs.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Anica Boulanger-Mashberg is a freelance editor and writer, and a bookseller at the Hobart Bookshop. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

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