(courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers)
I can still remember how incredibly isolating and alone it felt to be bullied continuously and mercilessly during 13 long years of school.
Like anyone under constant attack by bullies, I alternated between crushing despair, near-palpable loneliness and a sense that no one would ever like me or want to be my friend.
It felt like someone was excoriating my soul in real time, and so, when I picked up Ember and the Island of the Lost Creatures by Jason Pamment, the identification with the diminutive eponymous protagonist was near instant and total.
Here is a very small, The Borrowers-sized boy who spends his days bleakly alone, his only companion his evocatively resplendent art, wishing desperately that the standard-sized kids at the school nearby would see his notes begging for inclusion, sent by paper plane no less on a daily basis, and make him one of the gang, both socially and scholastically.
It really hit home, as did his subsequent adventures out at sea after a forceful rain shower knocks him off his feet, into a drain and then out to sea where a motherly sea turtle takes him on a grand and unexpected journey to an island where he will find other students who didn’t fit in where they were and who now have a home of learning and a found family of sorts.
But while the island is wondrous and the lessons sublimely weird and nurturing, and the discoveries of life miraculously diverse and far from the mainstream bring Ember alive in ways he didn’t think possible, as Ember and the Island of the Lost Creatures progresses he despairs once more of ever being one of the gang.
In fact, his fellow students seem to actively dislike and shun him, and alone on his wrecked boat, which is the only home this wholly unorthodox school can offer him, he’s not so sure he’s made much progress at all.
(courtesy official author site)
But then something quite extraordinary happens, or rather a series of extraordinary events, and Ember discovers what he is truly made of and that friendship can arrive at times and in ways that you can’t possibly see coming and which change your life forever.
A gorgeously drawn book which is a piece of evocatively rich and colourful art on every page, Ember and the Island of the Lost Creatures is primarily targeted at 8-to-12-year-olds, and remembering back to how alone I felt at the age, Pamment’s work is a beautiful reassurance that things do get better.
And that’s a message kids that age really need to hear.
At that point, you don’t have the words or the emotional recognition to really articulate what you’re feeling or to formulate any kind of workable reaction, and having a graphic novel this richly drawn and narratively expansive and empathetic as company, would be such a gift.
It won’t, of course, fix everything, but having a kid your age, who feels as much on the outer as you do, is a powerful reminder that while things can be nastily awful, they can get better and the wonders and joys can be unlocked and given to you.
At that point in time, and as alone as you feel, you NEED to hear that and it’s even better when it comes in the form of a garrulously adventurous graphic novel like Ember and the Island of the Lost Creatures which creates a world that is at first sad and bleak and then wondrously rich and gloriously alive and inclusive, all of which presented with artwork so delightful it is a rare treat in and of itself.
Ember and the Island of the Lost Creatures is a beautiful piece of work, narratively and artistically and on that basis alone, it should be treasured, but much more that, it is a graphic reminder that life can be so truly good and vibrantly possible right at a time when you’re wondering HARD if that is ever going to be possible.
(courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers)