The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates Jenny Pearson (Usborne)
During these days of Lockdown, as a teacher, I miss most the daily opportunities for reading aloud to my class: it’s the biggest Reading Gift I can offer the children every year.
To tell a story well, one has to feel it, live it, hear it, and understand it first, so it’s no good trying to read aloud from something you either don’t know, don’t like, or that someone else has chosen for you. You have to connect with it, because the audience isn’t going to engage if you can’t yourself.
Humorous books for children, in my mind, are
the hardest to read aloud. If, as an adult, you choose to share a funny book
with the children then you are going to need to find it a laugh yourself. But things
that adults find amusing aren’t necessarily the things that children do; there’s
a disjunct there already before you’ve even started! But if you can find a
funny book that’s been written for children and that makes you laugh too, then
you’re onto ‘Connection’ Gold.
Enter Freddie Yates...
Freddie Yates is an ordinary boy who finds
himself on an extraordinary journey, just as his primary school days have
ended. His beloved Grams dies on his last day of Year 6, and leaves him his
birth certificate with the details of his actual father. Freddie has already
lost his mum and although the mutual love between him and his step-dad is
strong, he needs to know who his real dad is. In search of his real dad, Alan
Froggley, he travels across the UK with his two best mates, but without his
step-dad knowing where he’s gone.
Chaos, of the hilarious variety, ensues...
Running through this fast-paced and
exceptionally funny story is a thread of belonging: Where have we come from?
Where are we going? Who are our family’? The ubiquitous shouty-Year-6
end-of-primary-school hymn ‘One More Step Along the World’ that is described in
the first few pages pretty much says it all really: “Who ‘travels along with
you’?”
You can hear this loud and clear throughout
the book, whether it’s during the annual Barry Onion-Eating Contest, or when
the boys are faced with right-side-upping a sheep that’s fallen over (yes, you
read that correctly). And the great thing about the message is that it’s given
with warmth and a deep empathy with children, particularly boys of Year 6 age
with their confidence and camaraderie, sensitivity and senselessness.
In The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie
Yates, the narrator (the eponymous boy) is so brilliantly voiced it
doesn’t come as a surprise that the author is a teacher herself. She’s clearly a
teacher who has connected with those
children she’s taught, listened to what they have to say about their lives,
listened to their jokes, listened to their fears. And now she’s sharing that,
not just with other children around the world, but with the adults who take
some time to listen to those voices in her book.
The book spoke to me as a teacher. I kept
thinking as I read it – “I can’t wait to be back to school! I want to share
this with my class! We will love this book together!”
It spoke to me as a grown-up. (The farce is
strongly reminiscent of Michael Frayn’s screenplay ‘Clockwise’; the warmth of
‘Son of Rambow’ - another film I love - is there too)
And it spoke to the boy me: the imaginative
world of a child, the worries, and the adventures I had with my friends - although
none of mine were anywhere near as exciting as the one Freddie has!
It ticked all three boxes to guarantee it
as a read-aloud gem. But don’t take my word for it: read it yourself, connect
with it...and most importantly laugh.
The children you share it with will thank
you.
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