SuitabookThe Dancing Pancake
Eileen Spinelli
- Reading
- Read alongside the child if family change is personally relevant. Pause to discuss Bindi’s feelings and the support she receives, while making clear that families can reach different outcomes.
- Themes
- Changing family life: Bindi adjusts after her father moves away, her parents separate, and she moves with her mother above the diner. The story presents the disruption through Bindi’s confusion, sadness and anger, then offers emotional reconnection without establishing that every family will reunite.
- Community and support: Relatives, a teenage waitress, new friends and other diner regulars form a makeshift community around Bindi. Supportive relationships are shown as helping Bindi cope with upheaval and discover a new version of herself.
- Faith and altruism: The book addresses faith and altruism; the detail of how it is developed remains unclear. Faith and helping others are presented as parts of Bindi’s life and as connected with relief from sadness.
- Worth knowing
- Family separation is central, and Bindi experiences sadness, confusion and anger. The story also includes homelessness, church and Sunday School, a possible crush, fake spiders and some childish insults.