Illustrations: Freya Hartas Illustrations: Kate Milner
Differently the same
A: Zombierella
Sometimes, you know, you can tell a book from its cover.
Within its vibrant, flap-folded cards
chockablock with every
spooky
Halloweney
whatever-you-do-don’t-go-into-that-housey
(I told you not to)
hide-under-the-bedclothesey
sort of image
(drawn by Freya Hartas quite delightfully)
this is
A
kid pleaser.
teacher scarer
parent shocker
you can’t read that
choose a proper book
sort of book.
A
scary funny
funny scary
laugh yourself into
an early grave
sort of book.
A
story you know
but not as you know it
(though perhaps as you always wanted to
without knowing it)
sort of book.
A
bring you up short
jolt to your thinking
just occasionally rhyming
sure fire best seller
Zombierella
sort of book
As grim as Grimm.
More so than Perrault.
It is
a
feast of a book that will go down a treat
with kids
who will gleefully 🤪
lap up the trickling blood of severed legs
devour words that conjure resurrected flesh
gnaw the rattling bones of a long dead steed
savour the fetid stink of a fungal coach.
A
super-imaginative
joy
of a book
for which the aforementioned Freya
must share the credit.
But wait.
It is written out in
little
short
lines
as if it were a poem.
Perhaps it is.
Despite its lines
it is not quite Revolting Rhymes.
Kids scared by the book (in a good way)
may
in consequence
be less scared of poetry
And that is most certainly
a good thing.
But don’t go yet.
There is more.
Its language is evocative.
There is real pathos
amid the scares.
This Zombie girl
has lost a father
she loved
and loves still
lost a horse
she loved
and loves still.
This graveyard tale
had depth
beneath its gravestones
life in its corpses
in more ways than one.
Form.
Images.
Humanity.
It really is a
poem
and a very special one.
B: The Girl Who Became a Tree
In a book near you
Not just a novel but a collection
of very fine
very special poems.
Not just a collection of poems but
a very fine
very special novel.
Here is
sensitivity
that lies at the heart
of sensitivity.
Sensitivity that lights images
we have seen before
and never seen before.
Sensitivity
true poets know
and know to share.
Here is
involvement
empathy
with someone other
who may not be other at all.
Involvement
that turns pages
compells us to know more
travel further
reach the end
and never reach the end.
Involvement
true storytellers know
and know to share.
Sometimes before
we have been gifted
fiction in verse
sometimes
narrative poetry
but rarely (if ever)
a book with
such fine poems
making such fine fiction
both.
It moves
more than either
enriches
more than either would.
Images too
of nightmare passion
and compassion
from Kate Milner
are essential
to the glory.
Daphne
This is a girl of legend
from the resonance of time.
A story told long ago
that lives on and on
through the screens of mobile phones,
library computers
Xboxes
iPads
at the heart of all her suffering.
Library
Grief acted out
in a theatre of books.
Childhood lost
in a forest of pages.
Haiku
A girl’s private pain
seeping out between the cracks
of his poem’s lines
A mobile rings
Although it is demanding
although it is never trite
simplistic
although it is deeply painful
this book charts a journey
through the forest and out again
beyond childhood and into
life.
It is a book for all daughters
and fathers
not least soon gone ones
(don’t I feel it)
and mothers
sons too.
It is the trauma at the heart of joyous life.
It is the trauma that gives joyous life.
It is a great
book
in so many ways.
A + B
So here you have it.
One book for kids
(whoever they may be)
one book for teens
(or whoever may read it).
Each book about a girl who becomes a tree.
(If you doubt me,
just see Zombierella clad all in leaves.)
Each a girl
with a father dead and gone.
Each a girl
with a zombie life.
And in the end
each a girl
who rides away
with a new old love
she knows already
and has only just found.
How much more the same
Can two such different stories be?
Sensitive.
Involving.
Drawn all in images
(verbal visual)
that draw us
in
and through
and out.
Two portraits
of one and the same.
One girl
painted by Picasso
and Rembrandt?
No.
Not that.
One hand.
One mind.
One wild imagination free.
One remarkable poet
Two remarkable books
Like us
So differently the same.
Note:
For any who don’t already know it, Joseph Coelho’s earlier collection of poems Overheard in a Tower Block (also illustrated by Kate Milner) is another must read, as well as a must for classroom poetry shelves.
