‘She is herself, Mina, but it’s like there’s another Mina waiting to be discovered or created here.’ (p 1)
A small book?
You can measure my regard for David Almond’s writing in inverse proportion to the length of time between a new book of his arriving in the post and me starting to read it. And that is often little longer than it takes to remove the packaging, quite regardless of any other delight(s) I may be in the middle of reading at the time.Which is how come I finished reading Paper Boat, Paper Bird and am writing this post within a day or two of its publication. (My indie bookshop is just great at sending books promptly.) Any additional time has only been because I read it through several times and then went straight back to reread My Name is Mina too (just brilliant, by the way), before I felt ready to write.*
All of which was because I think that Paper Boat, Paper Bird is not what it initially seems. Or rather, it is so much more than it initially seems.
On first glance, the format of this book and the amount of illustration would seem to indicate one of David Almond’s works for a slightly younger readership (like War Is Over or Brand New Boy). The story itself is short, one might almost say slight.
A girl visits Japan with her mother, goes to a temple and other sights, and likes it a lot. She sees a woman on a bus doing origami and tries herself to make a paper boat and bird. She writes her name on them and then sends them off into the water/sky. A Japanese boy finds the bird and writes his name on it too. Later the girl and boy meet (by chance?) on a pedestrian crossing and stop to greet each other.
Very superficially, that’s about it. The girl is ostensibly Mina, from Skellig and My Name is Mina, but apart from the way she writes the exact phrase ‘My name is Mina’ on her paper boat, there seems to be little obvious to connect her with the earlier character. Perhaps most surprising of all, the Japanese setting of this little story feels incongruous for this writer, so untypical of an author we associate strongly and passionately with the North East of England.
But all of this is wrong. So very wrong.
A big book
The publishers have included at the end of this little book both an autobiographical note from the author (interesting) and the first few chapters of Skellig (but not any extracts involving Mina, which might have been more relevant). It is almost as though they themselves felt that the story on its own was too short to justify the book. But to call out this story for being too short is like criticising a haiku for only having three lines. In fact, the parallel of the haiku is a valuable one for this piece is in many ways a love letter to Japan. It borrows its essence from many things Japanese: from origami itself, from the temple and its reflecting lake, from the house in which Mina and her mother stay, as well as from other things essentially Japanese, its poetry, its art, its theatre, its tea ceremonies. All of these things represent to some extent or other the philosophy that less is more. And that is what David Almond’s story is. Compared to a full length novel it is a prose haiku. Condensed. Considered. If it is simple (and in many ways it is) then its simplicity is sophisticated, sensitive. The same applies to the words and sentences of which it is composed. They are the apotheosis of T S Eliot’s ideal words ‘neither diffident nor ostentatious’, simple, yet carrying layers of meaning and of feeling. Beautiful because of, not despite, their simplicity.
And as the language, so the ideas it subtly and sensitively conveys.
For this reason, I do not think this is a book particularly for the youngest readers. It is an ageless, timeless story and will be appreciated by a wide audience, and perhaps most by those who already know and love David Almond’s work.
And what of Mina? Is she the same? Through both earlier books Mina is a flexible person, open to ideas and experiences as they come to her.
In Skellig she says:
‘See how school shutters you. I’m drawing, painting, reading, looking. I’m feeling the sun and the air on my skin. I’m listening to the blackbird’s song. I’m opening my mind.’ (p 56)
And in My Name is Mina:
‘Some say that you should turn your face from the light of the moon. They say it makes you mad. I turn my face towards it and I laugh.’
and then, as she starts her journal:
‘I’ll let my journal grow, just like the mind does, just like a tree or a beast does, just like life does. Why should a book tell a tale in a dull straight line. Words should wander and meander.’ (p 11)
This is the Mina of Paper Boat, Paper Bird. She is the same Mina. She is open to the experience of Japan. She turns her face to Kyoto and laughs. She is the same Mina, but the experience, the place makes her different too.That is the point. She shares herself with the place, with the water and the air of the place, through her paper boat and bird. They carry her name and a different name comes back to her.
A true gem
Sometimes I rather uthinkingly call a particular book a gem, and although I mean it up to a point, it is without paying much heed to the image. This little book of David Almond’s really is a gem though, small, compressed, multi-faceted and reflecting and refracting light quite brilliantly.
There are many themes, many images in this little space of words.
The question, ‘Where are you?’ and the response, ‘Here I am!’ run through the text. It is not insignificant. Mina has lost her father, but in some way finds him again in the reflection in the temple lake. Miyako , the Japanese boy seems to be gaining a new mother and begins to accept her seeing his city, its temple reflected in the same water of the same lake. Multiple reflections. Mina and Miyako are folded as the origami is folded. Re-shaped. Made anew. They swim in the temple water and float in the Japanese sky. There are many more images, too, for those with eyes, ears and hearts to see.
Over and over again, David Almond’s books are about a person’s relationship with particular place. Yes, that place is most often his own North East. But, at root, Paper Boat, Paper Bird is about Mina allowing herself to be shaped, made and re-made by place, by Japan. Even though the location is different, is this not essential David Almond?
Kristi Beautyman’s visual images have countless felicitations too: the beautiful way the paper birds fly across the landscape; the way Mina and Miyako looks so very alike, despite their differences; the communicative expressions on such simply drawn faces. This is more than mere illustration. Kristi Beautyman is a storyteller too.
One Mina, two storytellers, one story that is short, but in no way small. There is more magic in these few pages than in many a fantasy epic.
‘My name is Mina’ (to Michael, at the end of My Name is Mina)
‘“Konnichiwa!” says Miyako. “Kon-ni-chi-wa!” says Mina.’ (Paper Boat, Paper Bird)
Meeting. Greeting. Growing.
Turn your face to the moon and laugh.
M
Thank you once again, David Almond.
M*I already know Skellig so well I could quote you great chunks.