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.

Such a sweet book!
The illustrations are beautiful. The calm and gentle pallete with soft blurred edges give such a beautiful and sad addition to a very lovely story about dementia.

Using the tide as a metaphore for her grandfather's memory is a beautiful touch, but my favourite parts of this is the mother.
She isn't mentioned too much; the story is mostly about the child and her love for her grandad who forgets a lot. But even so, she is constantly present in the pictures as a third figure to help solve problems and offer love.

I think this book would really support and offer a sign of care to children and their families who may be learning to live with a loved one developing dementia.

I also love the size/body representation that the illustration style provides!

I found this so sweet!
It's inspired me to go seek out more books written by children to share as a teacher, to show students that you don't need to be an adult to write.

I'd love to use a poem such as 'Tell Me About a Day of the Week' , 'My Lonely Garden' or 'Scared-Sugar' with a class, let them read through and talk about it first, and then tell them who wrote it after. I think it would be a pleasant shock for them to find out that the poetry a teacher gave them was written by someone even younger than them!

Poetry is often viewed as something hard and boring and technical that children struggle with, and I think this book is a great start to dismantling that.

I've placed this under my ND/disability tag because even though it didn't specify at all, it gave me the big autism feels.

What a great idea for a poetry book - a collection of poems, each about a student (or adult) in a class at school.

As with any poetry anthology, of course I didn't like all of them, but the originality, ideas, and range or representation this book managed to cover had me sold very quickly.

From your classic joker, daydreamer, perfectionist or shy kid, all the way through to some deeper characters: the tough kid with an even tougher home life, a deaf child who teaches her friends to sign, a child who makes up a new fatastical reason every time someone asks why he uses a wheelchair, and the girl who isn't around anymore.

And I loved the little introduction that specified:
'Of course, in real life we are much more complicated...we're likely to be a mixture of several of them'.

I would love to use this with KS2 kids, maybe alongside my last poetry review ( Take Off Your Brave ) to get children writing their own book about their class - either with an autobiographical poem, or maybe giving everyone another child to write about (focusing more on positivity of course).