A beautiful story of very raw and real emotion, told in a way that children and adults alike can understand and explore to their own extents. It felt ridiculously personal, like a imperfect little window into October's heart and brain, but somehow also into Balen's and my own at the same time. Honestly kind of spooky.

I loved the poetic nature of this book.
When I read books specifically for my studies, I use sticky notes to tag pages. I usually focus on key plot points/events, parts I personally loved or that effected me, and then something unique to the book that runs throughout. This might be instances of a foreign language used throughout, repeated imagery, a particular character etc.
For this book, I was drawn to tab the structure of the writing. And there were a lot! I had mixed feelings to begin with, but by the end I had fallen in love with the artistic, almost experimental style of Balen's writing structure and printing choices. The decision to have all speech in italics instead of traditional speech marks, using size, shape, font, and placement of words to emphasize meaning etc.
Definitely something that would be an amazing creative talking point for children.

Leading from that, I really think this book is a perfect pick for year 6 children. It has so much depth to it that would allow them to begin to explore the ways that secondary school English will ask them to interpret and analyse meaning, whilst also being a more 'child-friendly' book as a whole, without being intimidating or needing that criticality to enjoy and understand. How Balen managed to make it both so intellectual, but also so easily relatable...

The book is a blessing for teachers, regardless of whether they enjoy the story itself or not. It is undeniably clever (a quality piece of literature) and covers so many subject areas, overflowing with learning opportunities, ideas for lesson plans, experiences, and interesting topics to research with children alongside the book itself. Just from the top of my head now I can remember ideas I had for history, geography, science, nature and forest schools, wellbeing and emotions, English (so many references to both existing literature and creative storytelling), art and design... the list goes on, and so many opportunities for visits/trips too. It was a never ending well of opportunity from a teaching and learning perspective.

Considering all my praise, it's probably surprising it's not a 5 star read for me.
I just didn't connect with the plot in ways that I do with my favourite reads. When I was reading, I was fully invested; feeling all the emotions, connecting to the characters, and admiring the creativity. However, when I put the book down for any reason, there wasn't that need to pick it up and keep reading. I just wasn't as hooked to know what happens next as I usually would like to be. There's something about 'every day life' books that just feel like they don't really have an ending, so I'm not as excited about the resolution?

Nevertheless, I loved it as a teaching tool and as a story. I would highly consider this as a book for my classrooms in future and would highly recommend, especially to teachers, parents and educators.