The Paper Dolls

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The children particularly liked seeing the page on the girls memories and some of the creatures that made an appearance in the book. A child that has learned how to hold a pencil at a young age will develop his or her fine motor skills more quickly. The book could help children to understand loss through a positive view of no one ever completely leaving, suggesting they can always be with you. The Paper Dolls offers the opportunity to discuss the status of fictional objects, the nature of memory, and artistic creation.

However, the pieces of the paper join back together and live on in the little girl’s memory, in which there are other good things. What I do love, however, is how this comes across to the adult and more older reader - there's an ache of longing in reading the spread, and I do think that The Paper Dolls may have some really interesting applications in therapeutic contexts. When the little girl grows up and becomes a mother herself, everything comes full circle and she is the one now that will make paper dolls for her little girl.I love that there’s a character who acts terribly and doesn’t receive retribution, simply the attitude that his actions weren’t important in the long run. A good book to use in KS1 alongside looking at fairy tales to see if children can notice the links or simply as a read-aloud story. If it was not appropriate to discuss loss in detail with a particular class, the book could still easily be enjoyed without putting a focus on that discrete link. This is the perfect way to encourage children to talk to each other when creating their character and discussing why they chose every feature. This is a valid opinion, and the book might have been a little better if they had shown the boy in an illustration encountering some consequences.

PBS Kids’ set of resources for talking to young children about race and racism might also be useful for educators. We encourage educators to visit the Association for Library Service to Children’s resource guide for talking to children about issues of race and culture in literature. The titular paper dolls ("Ticky and Tacky / and Jackie the Backie / and Jim with two noses / and Jo with the Bow") subtly change and shift over each page, interacting and reacting to their landscapes. I really like the ending and how we see that even if something or someone is gone they're still in our memories. A picture book that seems simple but gets richer every time you look at it …… Cobb’s illustrations capture the joy of childhood; between them she and the Children’s Laureate have made a book that works like magic.Her favourite part was the scene in the girl’s imagination where the dolls live again and as she rather poignantly said; “the granny is keeping them safe.