SuitabookTinder
Sally Gardner
- Reading
- Consider reading together or checking in beforehand about sexual violence and graphic wartime imagery. If those topics are difficult for your reader, agree on a pause point and whether to continue.
- Themes
- Power and control: Otto gains command of a tinderbox and wolves, but is reluctant to use it and cannot fully control how the wolves fulfil wishes. The magic brings power, yet the story also presents that power as difficult to direct; its overall judgement of Otto’s choices is not established.
- Sexual violence and threat: Rape is threatened repeatedly; Otto has witnessed assaults, and a prince makes an explicit threat towards Safire. The threats and witnessed assaults are presented as frightening and traumatic for Otto; broader treatment of these events is not established.
- Fear and uncertainty: Otto is often confused and buffeted by war, other people and the magic dice; the narrative uses unsettling dreams and Gothic imagery. Fear and disorientation are sustained features of the narrative and help convey Otto’s experience; the story does not promise a comforting tone.
- Worth knowing
- Sexual violence is a prominent concern: rape is threatened, and Otto has witnessed assaults, including his sister’s. War deaths, battlefield bloodshed, dismembered bodies and frightening wolves also appear, including in illustrations.