Dandelion Clocks by Rebecca Westcott

Olivia is an eleven years old girl who lives with her parents and her older brother Isaac. She goes to school, spends some time with her friends and is passionate about photographying. In her garden, she often goes in a studio where she can work on her own pictures. She would go there with her dad and he would ask her : « What are you trying to say with this picture ? Is it just for fun or are you trying to get a message across ?

Olivia's life is fairly simple and happy when suddenly her mum insists on giving her life's vital lessons : how to cook, how to put make up on, how to make rules for her brother Isaac who has Asperger's syndrome. They are also sharing deep conversation, and one day her mum would tell her : « Life is an adventure, Liv. Sometimes, you just need to let it happen. » Both of them are very closed and one day Rachel (the mum) decides to give her daughter her old diaries so Olivia could read them whenever she thinks that nobody understands her.

After a while, Mum's behaviour starts to be unusual. Rachel is getting tired and exhausted. Olivia suspects something weird is going on until she is been told the truth : her mum has to fight a cancer and from that point her world is falling apart. Olivia's feelings towards her mum start changing but after a while she realises that the funny thing about being utterly terrified and scared and miserable is that it isn't consistent.

I absolutely loved that book and reading it a second time was a great experience because knowing the ending gave me the opportunity to discover the main character from another perspective. Dandelion Clocks is written in the first person, from the point of view of Olivia. I think the story would have had less impact if it had been written in the third person because this book is like a diary. The reader understands really well how the narrator is feeling by giving us informations about her state of mind. What is fascinating is to notice the change at the start, in the middle and at the end. Due to the situation, Olivia is growing much more faster and she is becoming a very mature girl who is able to deal with friendship as well as trying to find different ways to make her mum feeling better.

The relationship between Olivia and her elder sibling with a developmental disability was also very interesting because they both rely on each bother even if at times Lives feels frustrated about the rules the family need to follow to make sure Isaac is safe and not throwing himself into tantrums. This issue is probably rightly explored with the same amount of focus and poignancy as the cancer storyline and Rebecca Westcott mentions Isaac's reaction about the tragic news. Page 143, Olivia says : “I asked Dad about it the other day and he said that he doesn't think Isaac is letting the information through – that it's a bit like him closing a gate in his mind to stop him from thinking things that will upset him. Lucky Isaac, I said. I wish I didn't have to think about it either.”

I thought the mum was the bravest character in the book despite the sadness of the story, she was still strong enough to share some funny moments with her family, using her sense of humour.

I was very pleasantly surprised with the complexity that this book had, the author has proven to have such an amazing ability of reaching across to different age groups. Everything about this book is brilliant. I absolutely loved reading the parts that were from Liv's mom's teen journals, travelling back in time and being able to compare the past and Olivia's present. I also like the ending when Liv decides that she needs to remember her mum's rules and try to live life loudly.