detention
SEE: punished, being
diary, catching someone else reading your
SEE: alone, wanting to be left • betrayal
die, where do we go when we?
SEE: about, what’s it all? • god, wondering if there is a
different, feeling
Perhaps they’re taller than everyone else, or they’re left-handed, or they speak with a lisp. Perhaps they live in a TV-less home, or in a treehouse, or with a dozen parakeets. If a small child you know feels different from others, read them the delightful Giraffes Can’t Dance.
Gerald the giraffe cannot for the life of him dance; and every year at carnival time, when everyone else is shaking their booty, he’s left feeling awkward and apart (see: tall, being). When he tries to join in on his long, gangly legs, the others jeer; and Gerald retreats into the jungle to look at the moon and mope (see: alone, wanting to be left). There he meets a cricket who tells him that everyone can dance – but that ‘Sometimes when you’re different, you just need a different song.’ For children mocked for their difference (see: bullied, being), the vision of Gerald strutting his stuff in his own unique way can’t fail to raise morale. Tell your child that ‘normal’ is nothing more than what everyone happens to be used to – and ‘different’ just means the next new thing.
Sometimes what makes a child different turns out to be their strongest asset – and they just need the chutzpah to carry it off. Take Elmer the patchwork elephant. With his gorgeous hide of coloured squares and tendency to play the clown, Elmer is adored by the other elephants. But Elmer doesn’t like being different. One day he runs away and rolls himself in grey berry juice – then goes back to find out what it’s like being ordinary. It’s obvious to even the littlest child that Elmer’s coat is special – and Elmer sees it too, in the end. Kids brought up on Elmer will associate difference with being more delightful than being the same as everyone else.
Few of us will ever have to deal with feeling as different as ten-year-old August in the extraordinary Wonder. We’re never told exactly what August’s face looks like, but we know he was born with a cleft palate, that he has a hole in the roof of his mouth, that he doesn’t really have ears, and his eyes are further down his face than they’re supposed to be. ‘Whatever you’re thinking,’ he tells us on page one with a mixture of honesty, bravery and humour we come to know well, ‘it’s probably worse.’
So far, August has been home-schooled by his mother, but now he’s facing his first day of school (see: home-schooling; school, being the new kid at). Both August’s parents and his older sister Via (a lovely model of supportive sisterhood) have their hearts in their mouths as they watch him go in on the first day – a ‘lamb to the slaughter’, in his father’s words – and we do, too. Everyone’s fears are largely borne out. The other kids either stare at August or look then quickly avert their eyes – and even Mrs Garcia wears an overly ‘shiny’ smile. One of his classmates, Julian, makes a cruel reference to the deformed Darth Sidious in Star Wars. But when Jack, a popular, funny boy, comes and sits in the empty seat next to him, our hearts swell. Jack isn’t afraid to ask August why he can’t get plastic surgery. ‘Hello?’ says August, pointing to his face. ‘This is after plastic surgery!’ Jack claps his hand to his forehead and laughs hysterically. ‘Dude, you should sue your doctor!’ he says, and soon the two of them are laughing so hard that the teacher has to ask them to switch seats. Finally, August has found a friend to whom his difference doesn’t matter.
August’s troubles are not over, though – and we watch him face a slew of trials, from falling out with Jack (see: betrayal) to feeling bad about taking his anguish out on his ever-understanding mum. But his extraordinary ability to put his hurt aside and be the one to bring humour into the situation wins him the respect of the entire school in the end. We defy kids to remain dry-eyed when Mr Tushman, the principal, picks out a certain pupil as the one whose ‘quiet strength has carried up the most hearts’ during the course of the year. Children who feel different will be moved and inspired by how much August has to deal with, and children in the vicinity of someone else who feels different will come away determined to ‘always . . . try to be a little kinder than is necessary’ from now on.
Teenagers keenly aware of what marks them out will love discovering The Chrysalids, set as it is in a future where people are expelled for being different. Mutations have become rife as a result of a nuclear explosion and anyone who deviates from the norm as described in the ‘Sunday Precepts’ (‘each leg shall be jointed twice and have one foot, and each foot five toes, and each toe shall end with a flat nail . . .’) is deemed a ‘Blasphemy’. David, our eleven-year-old hero who grows up during the course of the story, becomes aware that his ability to communicate telepathically is a mutation, and, terrified, does his best to hide it – not least from his own father. All over the walls of their house are quotations proclaiming ‘BLESSED IS THE NORM’ and ‘IN PURITY IS OUR SALVATION’.
When David meets Sophie, a girl with six toes, he is slowly drawn into life on the ‘Fringe’. Here, his gift for telepathy is useful – and he begins to enjoy it at last. David’s journey from his home in Waknuk, surrounded by zealots, to the shining city he has seen in his dreams and his telepathic ‘thought-shapes’, is a difficult one – but once there, he finds he can fully embrace his uniqueness. His eventual realisation that he’s one of the ‘New People’, destined to bring hope to humanity, will give heart to all teens in the process of discovering themselves.
SEE ALSO: adolescence • autism • bullied, being • disability, coping with • friends, finding it hard to make • heard, not feeling • loneliness • understood, not feeling
dinosaurs, crazy about
SEE: obsessions
dirty, not wanting to get
Small children can be surprisingly anti-dirt, scrubbing at the little felt-tip mark on their hand in the manner of Lady Macbeth and recoiling in horror when you suggest they plunge their hands into the cookie dough. Give
