By Kate Hodges
11th May 2021
I wrote A Girl Called Joy, the story of an expansive girl, in a shrunken year. I thought about the children, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, who were navigating this time of increasing isolation and helplessness, and I wanted to find some kind of antidote, to bring some joy and optimism back into the world in my own small way.
I set out to write a story without any obvious magic in it. But A Girl Called Joy is not without its own brand of miraculous energy, and this reveals itself through Joy’s resilience, her positivity and curiosity, and her very real sense of what she is capable of. I wanted to remind my young readers (and myself) that we share something magical in our ability to adapt, evolve and communicate, to stand up for what we believe in. To make the best of what we’ve got, and to make sure others can share in it too. I wanted my readers to know that, whether they are alone or together, they are much more powerful than they think.
In this book, Joy Applebloom’s family have travelled and worked their way around the world for Joy’s whole life. They have witnessed wonders most of us have only seen on TV - the migration of Monarch butterflies in Mexico, meteor showers in Joshua Tree, the ocean around Zanzibar, volcanoes in Iceland. At the age of ten, Joy has already seen more of the planet than most people will see in their lifetime, and this informs the way she looks at everything. It is this particular quality of vision – this unbridled but very practical optimism, this willingness to fall in love with even the smallest details of our world - that she brings with her everywhere, including back to the suburbs of the UK, which is about as close to ordinary as can be.
At first, Joy struggles with the change in pace of her life. Having only ever been home-schooled, she finds the education system confusing and stifling, and she struggles to make friends. So, when Joy finds a 1000-year-old oak tree in the school playground, it is, an important moment of wonder for her, it is the moment she begins to feel less alone in the world. Underneath that living piece of history she meets her first real friend in the UK, Benny. Both of them marvel at how an acorn could produce something so magnificent and ancient. They see the tree exactly for the miracle that it is, and this creates an immediate connection between them. But there are plans to cut it down. And Joy Applebloom is not going to give in and accept them. She is not the kind of person who can just do nothing. Her belief in her own rights and her own power to protest is instinctive.
And when her peers feel ready to give up before they begin, Joy tells them, “We are small but we’re not nobody.”
I didn’t set out to write a story about a girl who tries to save a tree. My books grow and change as I write them, I am not the best planner. But Joy’s determination to act set the tone for the novel.
As a society we often like our children to be obedient rather than wilful, well-mannered rather than outspoken. Children are often taught to toe the line, but just look at what we are asking them to conform to. This year, more than any other, we have asked them to adapt and make sacrifices for something bigger than them, bigger than all of us and they have risen to the challenge miraculously.
A Girl Called Joy is a gentle call to arms. A small nudge in the direction of speaking up for what is right, and believing that you have the courage and the power within you to make small changes. The climate crisis is an ever-present monster of gargantuan proportions in our children’s consciousness. How do they even begin to stand up to something like that? And how can we help prepare them?
I think Joy Applebloom would say, undaunted, “One acorn at a time”.
A Girl Called Joy by Jenny Valentine is out now from Simon & Schuster Childrens Books, RRP £6.99
https://uk.bookshop.org/books/a-girl-called-joy/9781471196492
Illustrations © 2021 Claire Lefevre
