Satin by Sophie Masson

With all the atmosphere of a modern fairy tale or fable, Satin will entrance readers with its overwhelming sense of longing as Satin searches for things that are blue. Every morning before people are awake he slips out of the forest and scours the streets for things that are blue. With his coat pockets full he slips back to his home to put these pieces together.

His loneliness is palpable, the blue theme reinforcing the overwhelming feeling readers will get on absorbing the text. And the blue illustrations reiterates the force of sadness and depression Satin feels as he collects his pieces of blue for the thing he is making. But he still feels something is missing. Readers will sympathise with Satin as he searches the streets, slipping back into the forest as the sun rises, hoping that something will happen to change his routine.

And as with any good story, it does.

One night he hears the word blue and spies a child telling her teddy that mum is blue. Satin knows that she needs blue, so he selects his best piece and leaves it on their windowsill. The girl is delighted. When Satin returns to his bower, he thinks about his collection.

And next morning he fills his coat pockets with his pieces of blue and walks through the town, leaving pieces on windowsills, doorsteps and letterboxes.

At one house where he left his first piece the door opens and a woman is standing there with blue in her hair and she asks him to come in. Now they collect blue together, although Satin still does not know that feeling blue means being sad. And it doesn’t matter.

With the bird figuring prominently on some pages and spotted on others, readers will cast their minds to the Bower Bird, a collector of shiny things, particularly blue. The bird does this to attract a mate, and this unknowingly is what Satin does.

That the man has now found a mate though his blue collection is a neat parallel with the animal world. Find out more about the bower bird by searching for ‘satin bower bird’. Readers will be intrigued with the images of the blue collection of this particular bower bird and see parallels to the story.

The illustrations are wonderful, full of layers of different blues, on some pages in broken crockery, and marvellously pieced together on the endpapers. Kids will love collecting their own pieces of blue to see how they can be fitted together and try mosaics for themselves. I love the impression of Satin’s home in the forest, with overreaching branches, the hint of a chair and a hanging picture and mosaic pieces on the floor. And the word, Satin will create another level of interest amongst inquiring children.

Themes: Depression, Loneliness, Blue, Collecting, Mosaics, Bower birds.

Fran Knight