It is not a commonplace occurrence where I like a children’s book so much that it prompts an immediate second reading. It happened last year with the release of Weird Al’s When I Grow Up (the better title for which I still believe would have been As I Grow Older) and then again today when Kyo Maclear and Isabelle Arsenault’s Virginia Wolf crossed my desk at work.
Virginia Wolf is a story of how depression may manifests itself for some. It is told through the characters of two sisters, Virginia and Vanessa, one severely depressed and the other seemingly well-adjusted and content. They were inspired (or at least named) after well-known writer Virginia Woolf and her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, of whose relationship I am generally uninformed besides knowing they were close.
In the children’s book, Virginia gloominess is evidenced by general lack of desire to do anything but stay in bed; she sleeps a lot, tells her friends to go away and doesn’t talk much. She is bothered by the sounds of birds chipping, Vanessa’s tooth-brushing, and even the bright color of her sister’s dress. When Vanessa asks Virginia what would make her feel better, she replies by saying that traveling to Bloomsberry would; Bloomsberry being a perfect, make-believe place, where “absolutely no doldrums” exist. When she falls back asleep, Vanessa takes out her art supplies and begins painting Bloomsberry on the walls of her sister’s room, making “it look just the way it sounded.” When Virginia wakes up, she helps her sister despite the “howling” that initially prevented her from noticing her sister’s work. Together they paint and create stories well past midnight. Through the cathartic release the creative process provided, Virginia is finally able to leave the house by the end of the book.
I believe that the book is an essential oasis amid fluffy, cutesy, nonsensical books with abstract messages of the world that prevalently pollute the children’s bookshelves. Even so, I do wish that the authors incorporated the fact that depression may sneak into lives of even those that are “well-adjusted” and that Vanessa and Virginia may be the one and same. I am also unsure why ‘violin music’ is crossed out on the list of “a few things to help lift a WOLFISH mood” on the inside cover. Surely, stringed instruments may evoke feelings of melancholia, but descriptions of this are devoid from the book. Despite these indiscretions, within the pages of Virginia Wolf lies an important message that depression and gloominess may sometimes be averted through creativity. It is truly a gem among typical garbage force-fed down the throats of American children.
