SuitabookMum’s Jumper
Jayde Perkin
- Reading
- Read alongside the child rather than rushing to explain or cheerfully resolve the sadness. Pause around the hospital, the death and the jumper; invite feelings or memories, and let the child choose whether to continue talking.
- Themes
- Grief after a parent’s death: The young girl loses her mother and tries to understand the resulting grief, loneliness, anger and confusion. Grief is presented as complicated and lasting rather than as something that simply becomes smaller; the child and father learn to live with it together.
- Memory through an object: The mother’s folded red jumper becomes connected with memories and with the child’s effort to keep her mother close. The jumper functions as a concrete way of representing love and remembrance while the child grows around her grief.
- Support does not remove loneliness: The child grieves with her father and is surrounded by caring people, yet still feels alone and detached. The story distinguishes between receiving kindness and no longer feeling grief, allowing both experiences to exist together.
- Worth knowing
- The mother’s hospitalisation and death, followed by the child’s devastation, detachment, anger and difficulty concentrating, may feel especially close to a child experiencing bereavement. The story also includes kindness from adults, teachers and friends.