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Tuesday, 8 October 2024

Review: The Mosaic

When I was small, I was given clay turning tools and a mosaic kit. With them, I was able to create colourful landscapes that required no restricting boundaries. The results were unique yet beautiful.

The Mosaic take this one step further, depicting change not as the harbinger of disruption and upset but rather the catalyst for something altogether beautiful, comforting and … new.

The day Mama’s vase broke marks a distressing turning point for young Frankie. Like the vase, her world shatters. Dad leaves and with him a huge chunk of Frankie’s childhood memories and loves. Mama fades away. Nan assumes control. And although Nan rescues as many broken bits of the vase and the family as she can, nothing is quite as it was.

For Frankie and many youngsters like her, this sort of upheaval, is at best upsetting but also often instils itself into everyday thoughts and behaviours draining one’s life-colours. Before this happens, Nan takes Frankie for a trip into the city. Here, they visit an art gallery.

Frankie is entranced and enthralled by the light, and patterns, the colours and shape of the various artforms until, after stepping around a corner, she encounters a sight so magnificent, it leaves her breathless with wonder.

Gazing at the floor to ceiling mosaic, Frankie marvels at its composition. From afar, it is a landscape that ignites visceral reaction. Closer up, she is able to discern each detail, each piece’s form and beauty at once incomplete yet also entire because of their re-purposing within this new creation.

This collage of creativity illustrates a world of possibilities for Frankie and the realisation that even though the pieces of her world are no longer arranged as she was once accustomed to, they are just as beautiful and important and … there. It’s how one rearranges the pieces of their lives into new and wonderous and meaningful (visual) narratives that truly matters.

The Mosaic encapsulates the essence of endurance and love with elegantly phrased narrative and telling illustrations divinely mosaiced together. Kelly’s text escorts the reader from Frankie’s broken world to her moment of epiphany with just the right degree of emotion and rhythm, while Johnston’s touching water-colour illustrations provide the gorgeous musical accompaniment to this lilting song.

It's an experience that addresses family dynamics, coping with change of and of course creativity and art. Finding the beauty of life within its wrappings of discomfort and discord is not easy for the best of us, let alone children grappling with disruptions to their normal. The Mosaic helps us find and appreciate that beauty in a myriad of joy-filled ways.

Highly recommended reading.

Title:  The Mosaic
Author:  Deborah Kelly
Illustrator:  Nicky Johnston
Publisher:  EK Books, $24.99
Publication Date:  2 October 2024
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781922539731
For ages:  3+
Type:  Picture Book