The gift by Michael Speechley
Puffin, 2019. ISBN: 9780143788980.
(Age: 4+) Recommended. Themes: Love, Loneliness, Gifts. When Rosie
looks at the derelict house across the road, she feels that someone
must live there. She sometimes sees a hand come out from behind the
door to take in whatever is delivered on the front doorstep. She
sometimes sees a shadow across a window, but the house is overgrown
and unloved.
Rosie decides that she will leave a gift for the old woman in the
house. Her mother, now dead, used to tell her to give a gift that
was different, unusual and surprising. Rosie thinks about what to
leave on the front door step. She thinks about a variety of things,
rejecting them all, until she finally thinks of the perfect thing.
Her weed, carefully placed on the door step with a ribbon attached
is taken in and when Rosie looks at the house in the morning, the
weed is in a beautiful vase in the window. Rosie keeps leaving a
weed on the doorstep, until one day she decides to knock on the
door.
When she goes into the house, she is surprised that the woman is
much younger than she thought, and her story will melt the hearts of
the readers.
A bond is made, a connection secured which sees Rosie use her
mother's plants to rebuild the woman's garden.
From a simple gift a friendship blooms, from a simple act of
kindness two lives are enhanced, and the woman, a recluse, is helped
back into the world, while Rosie is able to use her mother's plants
for something her mother would have been very pleased to see.
Without being overly sentimental, this story will tug at the heart,
its simplicity a lesson for us all, our eyes opened to the needs of
those around us, offering an act of kindness which will engage the
readers and encourage interaction.
Fran Knight