Kathryn Apel has written a story that that will slide straight into your heart.
Lucy and her dad move a lot so it’s hard to make friends. They don’t have much money, but they have each other.
‘It's just
you and me, Lucy. We
don't need nobody else.'
When Lucy discovers Snail while looking for treasure in the park she finds a friend to keep her company and share her secrets. Snail knows Lucy doesn’t like being a new kid at school wearing someone else’s faded, smelly uniform and shoes. It’s hard when you’re shy and don’t feel confident and Lucy often wants to crawl inside a shell and hide.
This place is different. Miss Darling her new teacher 'looks nice, smells nice and acts nice' and makes learning fun. The class Inquiry unit ‘How Can I Help?’ sparks great excitement as Lucy's classmates are challenged to help at home, find ways to reduce rubbish in the community and become daring Toad Busters.
Lucy grows in confidence as she feels included and gets to know her classmates, but it’s popular Tahnee, who encourages and listens to her and squeezes inside Lucy’s shell to become her friend. When Lucy's dad has an accident, it's the people in the community who reach out with kindness to care for them. This place feels like home. But can Lucy convince her dad to stay?
“I don’t want to go, Snail,”
I whisper,
feeling like a stodgy glob
of squidgy putty – with all my
happiness squished out.
I am in awe once again of Kathryn Apel’s skill in weaving together similes, metaphors, alliteration, imagery, rhyme and shape poetry with compassion and creativity to tell Lucy’s story in What Snail Knows.
The gorgeous front cover by Mandy Foot, beautifully captures Lucy and Snail’s friendship along with the delicate black and white sketches throughout the book featuring snail and special moments in the story.
If you enjoyed What Snail Knows then you might like to read Kathryn's other verse novels Bully on the Bus and Too Many Friends. In fact, Tahnee was a character in Too Many Friends.
Verse novels are the best!
Thank you for the copy of this book to review University of Queensland Press.
Happy reading!
