Life

It makes me sad, and mad, that the first person with a disability who I ever got to know was my own baby! This is because, growing up, I had been separated from people with disabiltiies – or, rather, they had been separated from me. Not only in my education and day to day life, but in the books I read, and shows I watched on TV. People with disabilities, and their stories, were so effectively and comprehensively excluded from most mainstream culture that I wasn’t even aware it was happening until I became the mother of a child with…

Mika is growing up, though it seems her mother does not quite see it just yet. When the book opens, Mika and her family are on holiday at a music festival and right away, there’s an unease about Mika any young reader on the cusp of change will recognise. Laura Bloom manages to convey Mika’s unease with her skin, or the rather the skin that no longer fits her because she’s figuring out who she is – is she the person to be pulled in a dozen different directions pleasing everyone else or just the one she wants to be…

Frankie has always wanted a horse and when her family move to Mullumbimby for a ‘tree change’, she is hopeful this will become a reality. As it turns out, the ‘tree change’ was perhaps a last attempt at saving Frankie’s parents’ marriage, and the story begins with Frankie at her dad’s place and then off to her mums, who has repartnered and set up family with Vivian and her young daughter. Frankie is caught between concern for her dad, who is clearly not coping and is deeply saddened by the marriage breakdown, and excitement as her mother presents her with…