Pandemic by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley
Scholastic, 2020. ISBN: 9781760976088.
(Age: 4+) Highly recommended. Reflecting the year we have had it is
fitting that a book be presented for younger readers to learn of a
pandemic that happened in the past. Children can read and learn of
the Spanish Flu which circled the world in much the same way as
COVID19 has, but with bitter consequences because of the paucity of
scientific knowledge and care.
Whatley's pen and wash illustrations show us a different time, with
men returning to Australia from The Great War, bringing home this
deadly virus. In quarantine himself Whatley resorted to a quick and
available medium for his images: a ball point pen. Overlaid with
sparse colour washes of mainly browns and greens, the images he
developed have an appealing freshness, with sepia tones
communicating times past.
Children will readily notice the similarities and differences in
government and public responses to the virus. Seeing families remain
behind closed doors, shutting their curtains to warn others not to
approach, noting the widespread use of masks, closed shops and homes
but equally noting the vastly different medical responses. They will
be intrigued with the ambulance, the transport used by the children
to ferry the food to their neighbours, the lack of plastic tubs and
containers, and equally delighted with images of how children looked
one hundred years ago. In French's story she draws on the efforts of
her great grandmother, galvanising the children to supply food to
those in need in their community. They picked the food from
neglected gardens and trees, fed the lambs, collected eggs from
chook houses, taking it back to her to cook into soups and food
parcels, ready to be cycled out and left on front porches for those
in quarantine.
Readers will marvel at the self sacrifice of these families one
hundred years ago and be equally impressed with communities'
responses to COVID 19, able to share stories of what happened in
their neighbourhoods.
This beautiful book, extolling the positive community acton which
happened during the Spanish Flu, will ignite readers' interest in
keeping alive the neighbourliness which occurs during COVID 19, so
reviving the feeling of friendliness needed when a whole country is
in quarantine.
To learn more of the Spanish Flu in Australia see the National
Museum
of Australia's site.
Themes: Pandemic, Virus, World War One, Community, Neighbours,
Sharing, COVID 19, Kindness.
Fran Knight
