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Jump to navigationJump to searchDandelion Clocks by Rebecca Westcott (view source)
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{{infoboxinfobox2
|title=Dandelion Clocks
|author=Rebecca Westcott
|publisher=Puffin
|date=March 2014
|amazonukaznuk=<amazonuk>0141348992</amazonuk>|amazonusaznus=<amazonus>B00F10Z4QY</amazonus>|cover=0141348992
|website=http://www.rebeccawestcottwriter.com
|video=
Losing a parent is always horrible, but watching your mother turn from a vibrant, noisy and extravagantly affectionate woman into a thin, fragile invalid when you're only just twelve must be a special kind of hard. For Liv it's even harder because her brother has Asperger's Syndrome and even the slightest change to his routine is likely to cause a bout of screaming hysteria, so managing his reactions to the inevitable disruption has to be a priority for everyone.
And yet . . . astonishing as it may seem given the topic, this is a funny book too. Liv's mum wrote a diary when she was about the same age as Liv, and as the days count down and the terminal illness takes hold, Liv finds much to console and to advise her in the tattered old notebooks her mother has passed on. For a start, her mother made all the same mistakes and blunders she has been telling Liv off for, and she clearly went through all the same uncertainties about boys. Liv is constantly surprised at how naïve her mum was, how young she sounded, and she can't get over the number of differences between life in the eighties and now. Her mum seems more obsessed with her dead guinea pig than boys, and her notion of what would constitute a generous amount of pocket money is just pitiful!
Liv is lucky in many ways because she has a caring father and aunt, and a superbly understanding best friend. Nonetheless her attempts to cope with her grief, so delicately yet clearly depicted here, made her hard to be close to, and it does no disservice to the extremely good story to say that it can also provide helpful lessons for the friends of bereaved people in how to handle the situation. In fact, it is a book which should be in every school library. A young person going through a death in the family might find it too hard to read until time has softened the pain a little, but it would be a valuable support for classmates and friends on what to do and say. The author writes with assurance and insight — hard to believe this is her first book — and clearly has lots of experience with young people. If this is an example of the calibre of her writing, we may look forward to many more excellent books from her.
