Castle crashing by Andrea Rowe and Hannah Sommerville

A delightful book about children on holiday at the beach becomes a warm recollection for many adults and children alike of family time spent at the seaside. Five kids on the cover are having the most fun, building up a sandcastle, then pulling it down, working together with buckets and spades, buckets and trolleys.  They are all in beach clothes and hats against the sun, with a lighthouse in the background and a warm looking sea breaking waves on the shore. It is o reminiscent of summer in Australia, where thousands go to stay in shacks and other seaside accommodation, transplanting their families for a period of time, time full of doing things not done at home.

Bonnie calls her friends to the beach. Matilda begins to dig out a trench while Milla builds rooms with shells, Clancy is digging a hole and Clementine is making windows with shells and broken coral.

But Bonnie wants one huge castle to be built in a place she wants it to be, a clubhouse for them all. She tries hard to get them to listen and work together, but they go on with their own castles.

Bonnie becomes very frustrated and marches off alone. She follows a trail into the dunes, and soon she is very much alone. There are no other children or their sandcastles. She sits and counts to ten, cooling down, thinking mess-ups can be mended. She hears familiar noises from her friends as they rush towards her, hugging her to them. She whispers I’m sorry, and the group returns to the castles, together, and together they dance across the sand, pushing some over. Tomorrow is another day.

This lovely tale reflects the emotions felt by younger readers. Bonnie’s need for her friends to do what she wants, falls on deaf ears, and it takes some time by herself to work herself out of her  temper.The others come to find her and all of them have learnt some positive ways of behaving with their friends.

Bonnie learns to calm down, apologising to the others for trying to order them all into doing something she wanted. Her friends are patient and understanding with Bonnie, waiting for her to calm down.

Illustrator, Hannah Sommerville, has created beautiful scenes against which the events are played out. The warmth of the beach is reflected in the illustrations, the gritty sand, the waves in the background and the friends on the beach building sandcastles will readily remind children of times they have spent at the beach, and look at the way the illustrator shows us Bonnie and how she behaves when thwarted. Amongst all the fascinating images portrayed, I love the unregimented shacks with a track leading to the beach, and I love the images of Bonnie as she calms down in the dunes. Readers will love this book, showing both sides of an argument, modelling how to resolve differences of opinion amongst friends.

Themes: Patience, Beach, Summer, Friendship.

Fran Knight