Suitabook26 Fairmount Avenue
Tomie dePaola
- Reading
- Read one episode at a time, pausing to notice historical detail and humorous retelling. Revisit the illustrations and invite the child to compare the narrator’s viewpoint with their own reaction.
- Themes
- Family and neighbourhood life: The narrator’s childhood is situated among relatives, friends and a neighbourhood whose people are shown in connection with one another. The emphasis is affectionate and community-centred, presenting family and neighbours as important parts of everyday life.
- Childhood perspective and memory: A first-person narrator retells experiences at home and school from a child’s perspective, including ordinary ups and downs and comic incidents. The child’s innocence, curiosity and precociousness are used to create humour and relatability rather than presented as problems to solve.
- Change and belonging: The family begins building a new house in 1938, while the narrator encounters school experiences and events associated with that period. The book presents this mainly as information or explanation.
- Worth knowing
- Some episodes involve a hurricane, a child briefly becoming airborne, and eating chocolate laxative. These are presented as comic or dramatic incidents, but their full emotional intensity is not clear.