Wonder Child…

Wonder Child is a picture book comprised of experiences of wonder. Each moment is captured in a poem written from the point of view of the wonder child. 

Wonder Child is born out of my years of experience working with children and young people. Children have an ability to see, as adults often do not, the transformative, transcendental power of nature: an ability to be transported by the beauty of simple and everyday things. A wonder child is extraordinary: they have freedom, capacity, they can do anything, be anyone, unlimited by the strictures of reality. And the only special power that a wonder child needs is imagination. All children have the potential to be wonder children. They can live in the city, or in the countryside, a flat or a farm. The wonder child is Every-child, and all children deserve the opportunity to engage with the natural world. The wonder child has no gender or race, their family unit is unspecified. They have a clean bed and an adult who reads them stories and while this is not what every child has, it is what every child deserves, and I am unashamed in setting this as a standard.

When I was teaching, I used to enjoy watching the girls’ sports fixtures. Once I was out watching the hockey, chatting to a woman who was cheering on her niece. She was there with her own little girl who must have been about three. The wee one, perhaps inspired by her big cousin, was keen to play ball and I was rolling a hockey ball to her and she was kicking it back. In the North of Scotland it gets dark early in the winter months and we were starting to lose the light on what had been a rainy autumn afternoon. The sun broke through the cloud but the woman and I carried on watching the match and chatting. The little girl let out a gasp and ran over to pull her mother’s sleeve.

‘The sky Mummy, the sky. Look at it. The sky is full of colours. There’s pink and green and blue and everything. Oh Mummy, look at it!’

A rainbow had appeared over the hills and the child was hopping with excitement as her mother knelt down to explain what it was. She turned to me. ‘Libby was born with cataracts in both eyes. She was blind until just two weeks ago. Her surgery has been completely successful and she’s seeing things for the first time. I can hardly keep up with her excitement.’

I thought then, if only we could see the world as Libby did, wonderful - new and freshly created - what a gift. Wonder Child is, for me, the convergence of a life’s work with children and an abiding passion for the transformative power of the natural world. For me, Wonder Child has a dual readership. There is the child who is listening and the adult who is reading and both have the potential to be imaginatively transported to a different place. Perhaps for the adult it might be a chance to rekindle some of the wonder of their own childhood, and to spark an imagination that may have lain dormant. The Wonder Child has no limits.