Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees

Hosted by Kate at Books Are My favourite and Best, the Six Degrees of Separation meme asks you to start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where you end up!

This month’s starting point is Maurice Sendak’s childhood classic Where The Wild Things Are. It’s possible that I first read this, or it was read to me, as a child but my first clear introduction to the book was while I was studying children’s literature as part of my education degree. I know I read it often while teaching, and to my children when they were little. It’s still on the bookshelf in the room my teenage boys share.

 

While an ocean appears in Max’s bedroom to take to where the wild things are, in the adult novel, A Lifetime of Impossible Days by Tabitha Bird, an ocean grows in Super Gumboots Willa’s backyard to help her to escape the ‘wild thing’ that is her father.

Super Gumboots Willa is her own superhero, so too is Elsa in My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She is Sorry by Fredrik Backman. This heartfelt story shares seven year old Elsa’s quest to deliver letters of apology on behalf of her late grandmother.

Atonement by Ian McEwan shares similar themes of regret, grief, and forgiveness after thirteen year old Briony mistakenly ruins a young man’s life. To be honest I found the book, which I read many years ago, tedious, but I did enjoy the movie (starring Keira Knightly).

There are several points of similarity between Briony and eleven year old Flavia de Luce, the main character in Alan Bradley’s series, which begins with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Both, for example, are British, precocious, and lonely, however while Briony falsely accused someone of a crime, eleven year old Flavia de Luce, with a fascination for chemistry, sets out to solve a crime of which her father has been falsely accused.

Food links the title of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie to The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. On her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein discovers she has a magical gift that is also a curse, she can taste the emotions of those who have prepared the food she eats.

Like Rose, twelve year old prodigy Paloma, in the Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery feels it is prudent to hide her thoughts. Her intelligence is both a blessing and a curse, it alienates her from her family and schoolmates to such an extent that Paloma is planning to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday, until she finds friendship with Mr. Kakuro and Renee.

So there you have it, some of you may also have noticed that the six books I have chosen are also linked, each features a child narrator

 

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