Tag alzheimer’s

Phyllis & Grace

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Phyllis & Grace
Nigel Gray and Bethan Welby
Scallywag Press

In this moving story, a little girl Grace pays regular visits to her next door neighbour, an elderly woman who lives by herself. Whenever she visits, Grace takes Phyllis something: a slice of cake, a bowl of stew, biscuits she’s baked herself,

jelly and a drawing she’s done at school.

It’s obvious that Phyllis enjoys Grace’s visits but as she shares with her, stories about her life, it’s evident that her memory is fading – names are forgotten, things misplaced, and events confused. Nonetheless despite the huge difference in age and Phyllis’s increasing disorientation, Grace forms a strong bond with her neighbour and eventually goes regularly to visit her in an old people’s home and even meets her son who takes Grace somewhere very special.

Basing the story on the experience of his own granddaughter and her neighbour, author Nigel Gray’s story is told with great sensitivity and equally sensitively illustrated in Bethan Welby’s gentle watercolour scenes. Together words and pictures beautifully document the progression of dementia and how it might appear, from a young child’s viewpoint. A book for adults and children to share and discuss as gently as it’s presented by its creators.

The Tide

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The Tide
Clare Helen Welsh and Ashling Lindsay
Little Tiger

What a heart-wrenchingly beautiful story Clare Helen Welsh’s little girl narrator tells as she talks of her beloved Grandad. ‘Mummy says that Grandad loves me very much but that sometimes he gets confused.’

We then spend a day with the family at the beach – the child, her mum and Grandpa set up camp and as Mum watches, child and Grandad build sand castles and forts, crown themselves ‘king and queen of net and shells’. They all share a picnic (Grandad gets confused and buries the sandwiches) and then they go rock pooling (Grandad and granddaughter) and watch the movement of the tide as it comes in.

Mum likens Grandad’s memories to the tide – ‘sometimes near and close and full of life. Other times, far away and distant.’

Their musings are broken by voices and the family proceed together to buy ice-creams and again child and grandfather watch the tide

before becoming ankle deep in sea-water.

All too soon it’s time to go home but first they must shake away and wash off the sand and salty water.

Then it’s back home to talk lovingly together about their shared day.

The likening of Grandad’s memory to the ebb and flow of the tide is both moving and enormously powerful: Clare has chosen the perfect figurative language to help children to begin to understand dementia and be at ease with the subject. And, I can think of no better illustrator than Ashling Lindsay whose work I’ve loved since seeing her very first picture book. Her warm colour palette here is just gorgeous, radiating the unconditional love that so clearly exists between family members, especially child and Grandad.

A must have for family collections and for primary schools to share and talk about together.

Tricky Topics – Dementia and Death

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Two unusual books dealing with difficult topics, dementia and death, that illustrate children’s creativity and impulse towards transcendence both self and situational and both presented through the eyes of children are:

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Really and Truly
Emilie Rivard and Anne-Claire Delise
Franklin Watts
Sensitive, gently humorous, tender, touching and warm are the words that immediately spring to mind, as well as tears to the eyes and a lump in the throat on reading this book.
The power of story and a message of hope come through strongly as Charlie, who is very close to his grandfather, tells how this fun-loving, wise, playful, story-telling person becomes changed through dementia. Lately, Charlie finds, Grandpa has no more jokes and no more stories; all he seems to do is gaze through the window at the cars driving past.

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“An awful disease has eaten up his memory and his words. It has even swallowed up his smile.”
So much does Charlie want to make Grandpa smile that he comes up with ‘storying’ to try and get something of his beloved grandfather back. Such is the boy’s determination, love and patience that he does indeed succeed in igniting sparks of the old Grandpa buried deep within as he responds to Charlie’s retelling of his stories when he doesn’t eat,

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smile or even recognize his grandson.
The richly detailed illustrations are cleverly conceived with the background colours reflecting the changing moods of Charlie and Grandpa, DSCN2136

while black ink is used to depict the fantastic pirate, witch, gnome, animals and Japanese ninja as they cavort across the pages and the imagination of the story participants.
Yes, this is an optimistic, spirited view but that’s the one children tend to adopt.
Buy from Amazon

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Scarlett and the Scratchy Moon
Chris McKimmie
Allen & Unwin
Told from the viewpoint of the girl narrator (who but a young child would utter such purely poetic words as “ I had clouds in my eyes” ?),

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this gently and simply tells the story of the sadness associated with losing beloved pets and the sheer excitement of welcoming new ones into your family.
Scarlett can’t sleep.

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The moon is scratching the sky, and she’s busy counting sheep “Daddy Neema, Mummy Neema” and “three, Baby Neema.”
She is feeling sad because her beloved pet dogs, Holly and Sparky, have died. But then, during breakfast the following morning, a knock at the door brings a wonderful surprise and the world seems fresh and full of joy again.

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Eclectic, scrap-book style illustrations created seemingly, by the entire McKimmie family though largely the author, with a whole host of different media including watercolour and acrylic paints, pastels, gouache, charcoal, grid paper, manuscript paper and much more, perfectly complement the wandering, slightly distracted, style of the narration.
A quirkily beautiful, honest, evocative portrayal of loss and new life. I can envisage young children being inspired to create their own imaginative visual narratives in response to this one.
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