C.S. Lewis urges us to read because ‘words matter.’ He says that ‘we read to know that we are not alone … to link our stories with others and to remember that our life, like all lives, has a story.’ Stories engage our interests, curiosity, fear, and sense of wonder. Part of the attraction of a story is that as the drama unfolds and readers engage with characters, alanguage and the events of the narrative, they discover an imagined role for themselves. This sense of ‘power’, choice and role-taking creates greater enthusiasm for identification, reflection upon important issues and the imagined consideration of alternative endings that occur through this literary encounter. There can be a special intimacy and trust created between a storyteller and a reader.

Morris Gleitzman is one of Australia’s most popular authors of books for young people. His novels explore serious and sometimes quite confronting issues in humorous and unexpected ways. Of his many publications, it is the wonderful Felix series which is my favourite. Beginning with the book Once published in 2005, and followed by Then, Now, After, Soon, Maybe and Always, the series takes the reader on a journey of discovery which is filled with a mixture of joy, hope, surprise, pain and sorrow. The English department at Mount Carmel has class sets of the first six books in this series and I’m sure we will be purchasing the final book published only late last year.

When Gleitzman first began planning Once he had no idea that a ten-year-old Polish Jewish boy by the name of Felix would take him on the writing journey of his life. ‘I just wanted to write a story about friendship’, Gleitzman said. ‘A wonderful friendship between two young people who can’t believe their luck because they find what most of us want more than anything – a true friend.’ Interestingly, the author didn’t want his story to be too ‘safe’. He wanted to explore every aspect of friendship and determine if this particular kind of relationship could survive in very difficult circumstances. So, he made the creative decision to place the two young friends in the middle of a terrible war – the Second World War.

Researching and writing Once became a personal journey for Gleitzman as his grandfather was a Polish Jew from Krakow. As a young man, Gleitzman’s grandfather had left Poland and travelled to England, years before the Holocaust. Sadly, many members of his family who stayed in Poland, were killed by the Nazis. When Gleitzman travelled to Poland and visited the Jewish cemetery in Krakow, he found a memorial with his family name on it. This discovery allowed him to ‘meet’ in his imagination, a boy called Felix, who would come to represent the many children whose lives were shattered by war and violence. This character Felix is again representative of the children caught up in war and violence today, in places like Ukraine and Syria.

Through the stories of real and imagined life we become aware of ourselves as feeling and thinking beings who belong in a world potentially more complex than, or very different from, our own. The reading of such stories creates a pattern to human experience which has the potential to inspire the young and affirm the old. Stephen King was right when he described books as ‘a uniquely portable magic’.

Clare Murphy
English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach