Just So Stories

UQP

April 2025

ISBN: 9780702268915

RRP: $14.99

With perfect timing, coinciding with this thread of my Mother’s Day reviews, Sherryl Clark’s beautiful new MG book arrived yesterday. At the same time, it has once again re-affirmed that I actually DO enjoy verse novels – certainly, those that have come my way in the past twelve months. And this one explores an aspect of family life that has occasionally cropped up in other MG books, but not examined in quite the same way.

The fact is that there are many families who experience estrangement from certain members, and often for very valid reasons, but sometimes purely out of misunderstandings or inability to see another’s point of view. As adults we are better equipped to deal with this but what about the children?

Sherryl has taken this premise and unpacked it deftly with elegance and delicacy, in a way that might provide a reader with some understanding of such circumstances.

11-year-old Gemma has been tasked with a class project of ‘family’ and creating a kind of family tree, showing the connections between generations and relatives. [I’m saying right here, I’ve always been opposed to this type of ‘project’ in classroom work because from my own life history, there were complications and anomalies that I certainly wouldn’t want to share – and that children shouldn’t be expected to either ]. There has only ever been just Gemma and her mum. Even her father doesn’t rate a mention – if asked, her mother has always said ‘it’s a closed subject’. And her grandparents are dead, according to her mum. [Much like The Kid’s father who was non-existent in her life until her mum died (firstly for protection, on her mother’s part but after a few years, simply because he didn’t want to know) and who has now vanished again….don’t get me started!].

As the rest of Gemma’s class, and her best friend chatter about cousins and grandparents, aunts and uncles, family traditions and events, Gemma feels more and more excluded and unhappy. She knows her mother won’t tell anything but her teacher is understandably concerned at Gemma’s truculent attitude when asked about her project. Gemma likes her teacher a lot and really doesn’t want to let her down. So she goes ferreting through boxes of photos and more and finds to her absolute astonishment, a photo of a woman who can only be her grandmother, but not as a younger woman.

This photo is of an older woman and taken only a few years earlier. So clearly her grandmother at least is not, in fact, dead. She sets out on a quest of finding out more and does so through birth certificates and online searching until she reaches a point of not only knowing who her grandmother is but where she lives, just a bus ride away.

Gemma’s first meeting with her grandmother is poignant and tender, but of course, this opens a whole can of worms. And it’s inevitable that she must tell her mother – in fact, she challenges her mother and takes her to task on the deception and untruths. How this chasm between mother and daughter first happened and how it begins to heal is told with great effect and emotion that will tug at heartstrings.

This is a quick read at just over 100 pages but there is a lot packed into it. There are quite fulsome teaching notes but I suggest some due caution with some ideas there as well [ e.g. I’d be reluctant to encourage any child to ask to see their birth certificates – there could be reasons why they’re not available and the least impactful of these is the cost. Many parents don’t bother to get the official document due to that, just saying].

If you note the first photo on my earlier post, with both a tiny Kid and I looking excited, it’s because we hadn’t seen each other for 11 months. Yes, an estrangement when her mother was having one of her more difficult times, after them having lived with me since The Kid’s birth. I was so bereft for that year, and The Kid, it appeared, missed me as much. Such a relief and such joy to be back ‘with’ them and around in case some things unravelled – which they sadly did, down the track.

For many children, there are similar circumstances particularly following parental splits. These often tend to be overlooked, in regard to a child’s emotional well-being, but are just as heart-rending and cause as much mental anguish, if not more at times, than other circumstances whether tyranny of distance or even death.

I found this one so moving and so utterly faithful to a child’s emotions as well as those of the adults involved. I can highly recommend it to you for your astute readers from around 9 or 10 up, with due sensitivity caution, and certainly one to keep in mind in your bibliotherapy backpack. I’m giving it a 5 💜💜💜💜💜 rating.