Early Readers: September 2006 Archives

“Each time you tell a story, the spirit of the person who told you the story is standing behind you; and behind him there’s the spirit of the person who told him the story. And each time you tell a story, they help you to make pictures in the sky.”

The potency of storytelling, its ability to traverse terrain and to cross cultures blazes strong in ‘Christophe’s Story’, an impressive, deeply thought-provoking and moving short novel whose understanding and compassion bathes readers in hope and belief that regardless of who we might be, whatever our backgrounds or beliefs, all our tomorrows might one day be better and brighter.

Removed from a landscape and populace that has been savaged by war, Christophe’s familiar homelands of Rwanda have been substituted for England. Starting at a new school, Christophe is taunted by one of his new class-mates Jeremy. These playground persecutions offer a glimpse at the dynamics of conflict that in the macrocosm of Rwanda led to Christophe’s family becoming embroiled in the programme of ethnic cleansing that was carried out there.

Accidentally revealed his war-scarred body, Christophe comes to tell his class his story of war-torn Rwanda, the death of his brother Matthieu and the burning of his house. That his class are unaware there has been a war in Rwanda is an indictment of the narrowness of focus and the Anglo-centricity of the classroom.

His storytelling constitutes a process of abreaction for Christophe who through reliving his trauma is able to begin the process of relieving that trauma arriving at resolve. Eager that the wider community should be aware of Christphe’s story, his teacher Miss Finch writes this down, an act of sacrilege for Christophe, who follows his grandfather Babi’s belief that stories begin to die when written down. Angered Christophe tears the story into pieces, however, Babi’s spirit visits him vesting within him the role of storyteller, master of words, lives and light…

Karin Littlewood’s illustrations brilliantly capture the suffering and pain surrounding the war in Rwanda yet successfully sparkle with the innate pleasures and life of childhood. To document such large political ideas, such hatreds and injustice in so short a novel and yet to leave readers awed, heartened and feeling in a real sense more tolerant is an enviable achievement and one which this exceptional book achieves with a real zeal.

“history is full of tales, and sometimes it takes bravery and pluck to uncover them.”

Bravery and pluck are the lifeblood that abound and flow so thoroughly through Czech siblings Jan and Marie Klesek who, following their father Frantisek, a maths teacher who has got a new job in England, move to a small village. Their arrival in the middle of the night is met by a welcome that is quite literally divest of any warmth and hospitality, a bull charges down the side of the car and the cottage in which they are staying – the curiously named “Shoe Cottage” – is cold, damp and in a state of near dereliction.

Bob Thomson the families new landlord is a seemingly uncaring and miserly individual who has a great nephew, Ross, and a great niece, Kerry, who both become the bane of the Klesek children’s life, taunting, teasing and being malicious to them both. On one such occasion the children take flight and come across a barn where they take shelter from a sudden storm. Lady Beddoes lives in the barn and the two children quickly befriend her.

Marie encounters prejudice and xenophobia in the guise of her new friend, Ashleigh’s mother, Carol Jillson who has a decidedly narrow outlook and small-town mentality when it comes to accepting newcomers, let alone ‘foreigners’.

What Jan and Marie find hidden in a shoe in the chimney of their cottage and that landlord, Bob Thompson, is desperate to gain possession of and thereby conceal, leads to a revelation and through a series of plot twists and turns lead to Lady Beddoe ascending to her rightful position within the village thereby setting about making things right once more! This is a real romp of a read, Jan and Marie make for particularly endearing protagonists whom it is difficult not to feel a joint affinity and affection towards…