A Not Now Bernard for the modern generation. A child’s imaginative adventures are ignored by an adult engrossed in their phone. Heartbreakingly the child says, ‘I know you’re right here… but sometimes you feel far away.’ Happily the adult notices the child’s feelings and joins in the fun.
Berta is a young girl with an artistic soul growing up on a farm in the Swedish countryside at the beginning of the 20th century. Her father doesn’t understand her and her mother is dying. But Berta longs to be an artist and can’t stay on the farm forever.
Based on the life of Swedish artist Berta Hansson, this is the story of a young woman with the bravery to live her own truth and follow her own path, despite the protests of her father and society at the time.
A universal story of longing and imagination, the perfect refrain for a young rebel.
This beautiful picture book is well suited for being in the hands of a child who experiences the loss of a loved one. It is a story of grief that manages to hold the complexity of the feelings of a child and her dad alongside the rawness of those emotions in a simple and perfect way. The child in the story finds comfort in her mum’s jumper. She muses why her mum left it behind, as she loved it so much. The child wears the jumper all of the time – the smell of her mum merging with her own smell. Her dad explains that grief is like the jumper – it stays the same size but she will grow into it – so the grief never goes away or diminishes, it is just that everything else grows around it.
review
Year group(s) the book is most suitable for:
Year group(s) the book is most suitable for:
Does the book contain anything that teachers would wish to know about before recommending in class (strong language, sensitive topics etc.)?
Does the book contain anything that teachers would wish to know about before recommending in class (strong language, sensitive topics etc.)?
Would you recommend the book for use in primary schools?
yes
Curriculum links (if relevant)
Curriculum links (if relevant)
Any other comments
Any other comments