We’re reading… ‘Gorilla’ by Anthony Browne
This is a sad, dark story, about a lonely girl called Hannah, who longs for her dad to notice her. It’s not your average pre-school book, but it shouldn’t be overlooked. ‘Gorilla’ invites an emotional response, and has evocative and witty artwork, that can start the deeper conversations with your young ones. It ends optimistically too, in case you are worried that the story will dampen the mood.
Hannah loves gorillas. She draws them, watches programmes about them, but has never seen a real live one. She yearns for her father to take her to see a gorilla at the zoo, but her father, so absorbed in work or his newspaper, barely seems to talk to Hannah, let alone take her to the zoo. The sense of Hannah’s loneliness is in the drawings, where she seems overwhelmed and powerless in an adult world. But magically, on the night of her birthday, the toy her father gives her turns into a real gorilla, who gently takes her by the hand on a midnight trip to the zoo. Is it the stuff of dreams? This is never answered, but there are intriguing suggestions in the pictures that her dad and the gorilla might be one and the same. In the morning, Hannah’s dad asks her if she’d like to go to the zoo, and she “was very happy.”
My six year old was interested in the story, and recognised the sadness in it, but said that he liked the bit “where the gorilla comes to life.” The two year old enjoyed the story in a ‘Tiger who came to Tea’ sort of a way, but it is aimed at older children. My feeling is that it’s a perfect book for 4-6 year olds. It has the immediate interest of the gorilla, but the depth to endure re-readings, and to start chats about feeling sad, or the failings of grown-ups, or how we can make others happy.
This book is a classic, first published in 1983, but the story and illustrations have not dated. It won the Kate Greenaway Medal in that year for illustrations, which are reminiscent of Jill Murphy’s (On the Way Home, Peace at Last and the Worst Witch) but perhaps wittier. Author Anthony Browne has won many awards for his other childrens books and is the current Children’s Laureate.
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