Wider Than The Sea by Serena Molloy
May. 27th, 2023 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
The story of a dolphin, a girl and a life-changing friendship
Ró finds school impossible. When she reads, the words seem to jump around on the page, and she just can’t make them stick.
But when she goes to the bay each afternoon to watch a dolphin leap through the water, she finds the strength to keep going. Then the dolphin disappears, and everything in her life starts falling apart. Can Ró overcome her fears to find him?
12-year-old Ró lives with her mum and dad in a small town on the coast of Ireland. Her mum works in a chocolate factory and her dad works in a garage and Ró knows that they’ve been arguing a lot lately, even though they try to behave like everything is normal when she is around. Her best friend is Cian Hynes (known as The Bean) and they have been good friends for ages, partly because no one else really wants to hang out with them.
In return for letting him play with her X Box, the Bean helps Ró with her homework because when she tries to read, the words dance across the page and she can’t make sense of them. She has been hiding this from the teachers and even though she tries to keep up by listening to audio versions of books, she worries that they think she is stupid. The only things she really enjoys are drawing (she’s working on a comic about a superhero she calls Girl Awesome) and watching the dolphin that’s spent the last few weeks swimming near the town.
But then the dolphin disappears from the bay and The Bean discovers that he’s good at athletics and suddenly the other kids want to be his friend and he’d rather be with them than with Ró. At the same time her parents’ arguments are getting worse and she’s sure that it’s her fault. Worse, a new teacher takes over their class called Ms C and she keeps watching Ró, trying to figure out her secrets.
Ró doesn’t know what to do as her life seems to being falling apart, and then Ms C announces a competition to design a stained glass window for the local community hall and maybe - just maybe - there’s something for Ró to look forward to …
Serena Molloy’s novel for readers aged 9+ is a moving coming-of-age story about a girl struggling with dyslexia against the backdrop of the breakup of her parents’ marriage told in a lyrical style. The formatting of the text is unusual in how it distributes text across the page but works well with George Ermos’s dynamic illustrations (although I do wish there had been more in a manga style given that Ró is described as using it in her own art).
I picked this up because my sister has dyslexia so I’ve always been interested in reading books that have characters with the condition and how it is depicted. Molloy has dyslexia herself and that may be why I found the way she depicts Ró’s struggles with the condition to be incredibly moving as Ró struggles with her confidence and feels inadequate and worries that she is a failure and that is why her parents are arguing. The formatting of the text works incredibly well in this regard in giving the reader a good sense of what Ró sees and also her emotional state.
There is a lot of emotional truth in this book - from Ró’s confusion about why The Bean no longer wants to hang out with her, her envy of Mya who seems to delight at taunting her and her desire not to have to grow up. I also enjoyed her reaction to Ms C who sees that something is wrong and how she is too frightened to open up about it, even though Ms C sees a shining light in her and believes in her and her talents. Ró’s relationship with the dolphin is also convincing and I understood why seeing it is so important to her, although I did think that the events in the final quarter were a little overdone.
George Ermos’s illustrations work well with the text (including the formatting) and add dynamism but I did wish that they had been in a more Manga style, if only because Ró talks about drawing Manga so it would have tied back in with it.
All in all though, I thought this was a really effective and moving read that fully does justice to its subject matter and I will definitely check out Molloy’s other books.
The Verdict:
Serena Molloy’s novel for readers aged 9+ is a moving coming-of-age story about a girl struggling with dyslexia against the backdrop of the breakup of her parents’ marriage told in a lyrical style. The formatting of the text is unusual in how it distributes text across the page but works well with George Ermos’s dynamic illustrations (although I do wish there had been more in a manga style given that Ró is described as using it in her own art).
WIDER THAN THE SEA was released in the United Kingdom on 30th March 2023. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
Ró finds school impossible. When she reads, the words seem to jump around on the page, and she just can’t make them stick.
But when she goes to the bay each afternoon to watch a dolphin leap through the water, she finds the strength to keep going. Then the dolphin disappears, and everything in her life starts falling apart. Can Ró overcome her fears to find him?
12-year-old Ró lives with her mum and dad in a small town on the coast of Ireland. Her mum works in a chocolate factory and her dad works in a garage and Ró knows that they’ve been arguing a lot lately, even though they try to behave like everything is normal when she is around. Her best friend is Cian Hynes (known as The Bean) and they have been good friends for ages, partly because no one else really wants to hang out with them.
In return for letting him play with her X Box, the Bean helps Ró with her homework because when she tries to read, the words dance across the page and she can’t make sense of them. She has been hiding this from the teachers and even though she tries to keep up by listening to audio versions of books, she worries that they think she is stupid. The only things she really enjoys are drawing (she’s working on a comic about a superhero she calls Girl Awesome) and watching the dolphin that’s spent the last few weeks swimming near the town.
But then the dolphin disappears from the bay and The Bean discovers that he’s good at athletics and suddenly the other kids want to be his friend and he’d rather be with them than with Ró. At the same time her parents’ arguments are getting worse and she’s sure that it’s her fault. Worse, a new teacher takes over their class called Ms C and she keeps watching Ró, trying to figure out her secrets.
Ró doesn’t know what to do as her life seems to being falling apart, and then Ms C announces a competition to design a stained glass window for the local community hall and maybe - just maybe - there’s something for Ró to look forward to …
Serena Molloy’s novel for readers aged 9+ is a moving coming-of-age story about a girl struggling with dyslexia against the backdrop of the breakup of her parents’ marriage told in a lyrical style. The formatting of the text is unusual in how it distributes text across the page but works well with George Ermos’s dynamic illustrations (although I do wish there had been more in a manga style given that Ró is described as using it in her own art).
I picked this up because my sister has dyslexia so I’ve always been interested in reading books that have characters with the condition and how it is depicted. Molloy has dyslexia herself and that may be why I found the way she depicts Ró’s struggles with the condition to be incredibly moving as Ró struggles with her confidence and feels inadequate and worries that she is a failure and that is why her parents are arguing. The formatting of the text works incredibly well in this regard in giving the reader a good sense of what Ró sees and also her emotional state.
There is a lot of emotional truth in this book - from Ró’s confusion about why The Bean no longer wants to hang out with her, her envy of Mya who seems to delight at taunting her and her desire not to have to grow up. I also enjoyed her reaction to Ms C who sees that something is wrong and how she is too frightened to open up about it, even though Ms C sees a shining light in her and believes in her and her talents. Ró’s relationship with the dolphin is also convincing and I understood why seeing it is so important to her, although I did think that the events in the final quarter were a little overdone.
George Ermos’s illustrations work well with the text (including the formatting) and add dynamism but I did wish that they had been in a more Manga style, if only because Ró talks about drawing Manga so it would have tied back in with it.
All in all though, I thought this was a really effective and moving read that fully does justice to its subject matter and I will definitely check out Molloy’s other books.
The Verdict:
Serena Molloy’s novel for readers aged 9+ is a moving coming-of-age story about a girl struggling with dyslexia against the backdrop of the breakup of her parents’ marriage told in a lyrical style. The formatting of the text is unusual in how it distributes text across the page but works well with George Ermos’s dynamic illustrations (although I do wish there had been more in a manga style given that Ró is described as using it in her own art).
WIDER THAN THE SEA was released in the United Kingdom on 30th March 2023. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
