David Almond (text) and Lizzy Stewart (illustrator), Puppet, August 2024, 240 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781406391619
This is a charming, moving and apparently simple story. It might seem at first to be a re-telling of the Pinocchio story. An old man makes a boy puppet who then comes alive. But this book is so much more than that.
Silvester, an old man, living alone following the death of his wife, had been a renowned puppet master. Many people in the town where he lives remember his wonderful shows. When a museum takes his puppets, sets and stages to make a special display, Silvester finds the house empty and goes to the attic to make one last puppet. The scenes in the attic have an almost fairy-tale quality as a small mouse and spiders watch Silvester working from within the room and at the window a bird also looks on.
The result is Puppet – a slightly odd-looking creation with mismatched arms and legs but which (or who) astonishes Silvester by managing to stand by himself and then learns to walk and say a few words. When Silvester takes Puppet out of the house, there are those who see him as a real small boy and those who don’t. Having Puppet gives Silvester a reason to journey beyond his house whereas before his world is becoming more and more circumscribed. On one of their visits to the local playground, Puppet (renamed Kenneth) and Silvester meet Fleur and her mother. Preparing for a very special and moving ending – both to the book and to Puppet and Silvester within the book – Silvester fits Puppet with a pair of wings.
The book is illustrated throughout by Lizzie Stewart’s black and white drawings – sometimes a whole page spread, sometimes almost as a cartoon strip, young readers will enjoy these as they bring additional life to Almond’s word pictures of the characters.
Puppet becomes very special in Silvester’s life and provides companionship and someone to love. Fleur, whose father has died, gains a grandfatherly figure from whom she learns how to make puppets. Silvester gives her all that he has left of his puppet-making equipment and is relieved and happy to know that someone will take over from him. It is a wonderful story of intergenerational friendship.
It also celebrates the power of the imagination and the value of memory. It pays tribute to the wisdom and value of old age and honours the circle of life. This is a sensitively written story that will repay rereading, can be enjoyed on many levels and by many ages and will live on in the minds of readers after the last page has been turned.
Reviewed by Margot Hillel
