Our seven-year-old daughter has suddenly really taken off with reading but we are struggling to know how to help her choose what to read next. In general she likes unconventional stories – although she also admires Hermione Granger! Most recently, she has really liked Andy Stanton’s Mr Gum books and also Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, which she loved for its quirky sense of humour.
Unconventional girls have been a feature of children’s books for most of the twentieth century – although not many are quite as unconventional as Pippi Longstocking. Her domestic set-up – she lives with a horse and a monkey and no adults following the death of her parents - takes away any element of judgement about what is and is not suitable for a little girl and allows for endless opportunities for inventive play – partly because famously, Pippi doesn’t go to school.
But, as your daughter has found with her admiration of Hermione Granger, school can be a good place for girls to be different or at least unconventional, too. Or at least it can be when it’s Hogwarts!
Trainee witch Mildred Hubble in Jill Murphy’s The Worst Witch doesn’t mean to be unconventional but her inability to manage magic spells very well means that she is almost always somehow different from the others at least within the confines of Miss Cackle’s Academy.
Unlike Hermione, Mildred masters magic more slowly than many of those around her and the results are delightfully entertaining without in any way being humiliating for Mildred.
Lila, the heroine of Philip Pullman’s The Firework Maker’s Daughter is unconventional in her ambition. Typically Firework Makers are male but Lila is determined to be one and has perfected the techniques of making some of the most spectacular fireworks such as Crackle-Dragons and Golden Sneezes. But Lila also discovers that a Firework Maker needs to face the Fire Fiend before they can be fully trained. Lila’s story is full of bravery, excitement and the unexpected as she travels to her dangerous destination with her unusual friends.
Your daughter might also like Flora, the star - along with a cynical, poetry-writing squirrel called Ulysses - of Kate di Camillo’s Flora & Ulysses. It’s a terrific and definitely quirky story which begins with the near-death of the squirrel as Flora’s mother tries to vacuum it up! Flora is wise-cracking, fast-thinking and very independent minded.
If irony appeals as well as quirkiness, Lemony Snickett’s A Series of Unfortunate Events which begins with The Bad Beginning is a tour-de-force. Snickett’s telling of the terrible misfortunes that befall the orphaned Baudelaire children has delighted children with its gothic imagination and black humour.
A Series of Unfortunate Events challenged a long-held view that believed children didn’t appreciate irony and paved the way for many in the same vein including Andy Stanton’s You’re a Bad Man, Mr Gum! which your daughter has already found as well as Philip Ardagh’s The Grunts in Trouble and its sequels.
For lighter, family-based humour Hilary Mackay’s Saffy’s Angels, the first in a wonderful series of stories about the close-knit Casson family who are unusual and original and a lot more savoury than the Grunts, would be a perfect next step in the not too far off future.
