My niece is seven years old, and recently on holidays she asked me if I thought she was weird as someone in school had said that to her, and she didn’t know why. Could you recommend any books that would help her understand that even if she is different, that this is not a bad thing? I hate the thought of her dwelling on these words, as apparently this happened a good while ago and she was still worried about it.
School conformity has a lot to answer for! Most people can remember unhappy times when they didn’t belong to whatever group was then the most popular, sporty or fashionable. As with your niece, peer pressure may have made them feel weird and there may not seem to be an alternative way of being.
Feeling an outsider is a very common theme in children’s books. It may be for external reasons, such as having recently moved, changed schools or because their family is different in some way. Jacqueline Wilson explores how girls cope with being different because of the unusual things about their families in books such as The Bed and Breakfast Star and, for older readers, The Illustrated Mum.
Accepting being different – or “weird” – and even celebrating it is also common. In David Almond’s award-winning Skellig, Mina is different because she is home-schooled and so doesn’t bother with any of the rules of behaviour that contain the other local girls. Mina is proud that they think she is weird and Michael, whom she meets at the beginning of the story, takes her at her own estimation.
For a seven-year-old, the best independent and ebullient girl in fiction is Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking. Like Mina, Pippi loves being different and is proud of all the things that she can do that other more conforming children can not.
In Laura Dockrill’s Darcy Burdock, Darcy is a 10-year-old girl who relishes being as different as possible to everyone else, also provides an upbeat role model who is ideal for anyone who doesn’t want to be just the same as everyone else. Flora Belle Buckman, star of Kate DiCamillo’s Flora and Ulysses, is also a refreshingly unusual girl who has an incredible adventure with a squirrel and a vacuum cleaner.
One of the most attractive and inspiringly “different” characters is Zack in Michelle Magorian’s classic second world war story Goodnight Mr Tom. Zach has a great zest for life: he loves to paint and to dress in a colourful jersey, which is very different to what all the other children wear. But, his great strength is that he doesn’t care what the others think of him.
Any of these books – and there are many others – might help your niece to see that you can be weird – and in a very good way!
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