This week, our spirited three-year-old Alice felt “just a bit sad”. Alice is curious, determined and effervescent… but almost never sad. She cried a little in Beauty and the Beast… popcorn hanging off her protruded bottom lip. She called her best friend James a “banana”… then felt so bad about it she trudged off on a self imposed time out. Then the worst happened. Poor Alice did a wee on a hornet. My fault. Earlier in the day I’d discovered a ginormous hornet, lurching down the hallway. He was prehistoric. So big that I couldn’t even contain it under the salad bowl. OK that’s a lie, but it was too big for the ol’ glass / paper manoeuvre. I waited for it to crawl into the bathroom… then slammed the door, hoping to starve it out. (Please don’t judge me, I’m just hopeless with insects.) A few hours later I peeked around the bathroom door, and low and behold, the poor hornet had croaked, right there in the middle of the lino. Told you he was prehistoric. So I flushed him. Or so I thought. That evening, Alice trotted into the bathroom, opened the toilet lid and discovered the hapless hornet, legs akimbo, still floating in the bottom of the bowl. His lifeless, accusatory wasp eyes, staring up at her. And with that, our curious baby girl no longer needed the loo. She just felt terribly sad. What happened to the wasp? Is he “died”? Why won’t he flush away? Oh dear.
Toddlers are deeply feeling little beings. And just like big people… sometimes, even toddlers get the blues. Chatting with your little person(s) about feeling sad makes for complex subject matter. So I reached for a beautifully complex book – Virginia Wolf by Kyo Maclear and Isabelle Arsenault.
“One day my sister Virginia woke up feeling wolfish…” And so the story begins, from the eyes of Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf’s sister. Or in the case of this book, Virgina Wolf, for sadness has consumed her sister in the shape of a wolf. Virginia is going through a bad spell and the world has turned dark. She hides in the shadows, only her pointed wolf ears visible from under the blanket. She growls, howls and turns her friends away. She’s consumed by sadness and her world is fading to grey – the shadows creeping across the illustrations, spread after spread. In homage to Alice and Wonderland, “Up became down. Bright became dim. Glad became gloom” as Virginia and her belongings tumble down the page, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Falling into depression. Vanessa tries to lift her sister’s spirits. But it’s no use. Nothing works. Virginia’s trapped in a shadowy world and says “nothing. To Anybody.”
Even as we read this, the sadness clawed off the page and tightened in my chest. But thankfully Vanessa persists at leading Virginia out of the darkness. The two little girls lie together, gazing out the window as Vanessa tries to discover what would make Virginia feel better. “If I were flying, I would travel to a perfect place. A place with iced cakes and beautiful flowers and excellent trees to climb and absolutely no doldrums.” This place is “Bloomsberry of course”, a place of Virginia’s imagination. Vanessa picks up her art box and paints this perfect place on the walls, turning Virginia’s imaginings into a vivid wonderland where she can escape her sadness. The illustrations, previously cast in shadows, now burst into technicolour – like Dorothy stepping into Oz. And Virginia smiles for the first time.
Virginia Wolf was first published in 2012 by Canadian duo Kyo Maclear and Isabelle Arsenault. It’s a made up moment from the real childhood of the troubled, but brilliant writer Virginia Woolf and her talented painter sister Vanessa Bell. Incidentally, Vanessa was a founder of The Bloomsbury Group, an influential group of artists, writers, philosophers and intellects. This enchanting and ambitious story focuses on Virginia’s sadness, rather than her famed madness, while sensitively exploring the subject of melancholy for young readers. It’s beautiful.
As the story draws to a close Vanessa asks Virginia how she’s feeling. “Much better” she answers sheepishly. And as we softly closed the book at home, I turned to Alice and asked the same question. “Alice how are you feeling my little petal?” “Delightful” she said, her little face smiling up at me. Delightful. I didn’t even know she knew that word. Isn’t she a clever sausage?
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