Sally Fawcett, Through the Gate, EK Books, May 2017, 32pp., $24.99 (hbk), ISBN: 9781925335415
Through the Gate is a delightful book that beautifully captures the difficulty and adjustment of moving to a new home and a new town, and the way feelings can change over time. It is told through the eyes of a primary-school aged girl who is very unhappy with her ‘new’ home. When she first sees the new house it looks old, dirty and dilapidated and she is upset that “nothing is the same”. She plods sadly to and from school, focused on her undone shoelaces. At the end of the week, she notices things have changed – the house is a little cleaner. The next week she’s still only mooching to school, but she notices a flower on her path. Then there are some homely touches added to the house, and her school journey is made more enjoyable by a friendly puppy. As the weeks pass, the house gradually becomes more homely, with repairs, decorations and a growing garden. The girl begins to notice all sorts of great things about her journey to school, including fruit trees and a bird – and finally, a new friend. At the end of the story, she realises her house has become a lovely new home.
The story uses phrase repetition to help young readers, and the illustrations build on this. With each new week the ‘new’ house is shown again. Minor changes from image to image mean there is a fun ‘search and find’ quality to the book. At the same time there is great scaffolding of vocabulary: as the girl’s experiences change her mood shifts and with it the verbs to describe her journey to school: she moves from plodding to mooching to wandering, then walking, marching and finally skipping. Likewise, the illustrations show the shift in her expressions and posture. Colour is used to accentuate her changing experience of her new home and town: until the final images, her home is in black and white, but more and more colour elements are added in to her walk to school as she starts to see the good things around her. The final image of her home is in full colour, looking very inviting.
Through the Gate would be a valuable addition to any library as a book for kids who have recently gone through the experience of moving house, with its gentle, optimistic message about how things improve over time.
Teacher’s Notes can be found on the Exisle Publishing website.
Reviewed by Rachel Le Rossignol
