Just as Dennis feels isolated because he is not understood by others, Clumsy! is a book about a little girl with two left feet and all thumbs—food spills on her clothes, milk tumbles from her glass, and things just seem to ‘wobble, tumble and shatter’ around her. She faces constant reprimands and recriminations, teasing and scolding, until she begins to withdraw into herself and all the thoughts she finds herself unable to voice fill her head, and which express themselves became pictures and drawings of the world around her. What is truly important is how the author brings out that while the relationships in themselves are not intentionally abusive, they end up serving the same purpose— she feels isolated and frightened, and is unable to respond to her mother’s gentle queries about what is wrong. She retreats into a world of her own by getting lost in picture books, using art as her coping mechanism to deal with a world which is often caustic with her.
November 2016, volume 40, No 11