WILFRED GORDON MACDONALD

 

Written by Mem Fox   Illustrated by Julie Vivas

 

 

 

Really beautiful book. More for me as an adult than for my child. Lyrical, sweet, symbolic and delightful.

 

I know we all like to idealise children and give them attributes of innocence and symbolic beauty which we we don't ooze as adults...which is how the little boy, Wilfred is portrayed here. I am the first to say it's an unreal ideal. Of course my experience is only through my own life experience of children. At odd moments they all display a fleeting beauty of amazing innocence but never to the extent of Wilfred here, who makes an unflapping effort to enrich the lives of much older humans.

 

We wish Wilfred did exist in reality, just so we could lend him out to the sad and lonely nursing homes which sigh an existence. That is why it is a book more for adults and why my child looks at it with squinted eyes, because although it is written about potentially real people, he knows that it can't be true. 

 

Maybe Fox and Vivas can write to me and say I am utterly wrong, that there does in reality exist a Wilfred. I hope so because this book is a beautiful hope and a dream of a story.

 

Where to buy: Fox and Vivas are iconic in Oz, so it'll be around. Always online too.