The worry tree and a fairy tale...

"Just because something's not magic, doesn't mean it can't be magical ..."

Early last year the big girl and I read The Worry Tree by Australian author Marianne Musgrove. She loved it (I did too) It was perfect for her at that moment in time; school was not great, friendship stuff, feeling akward, not fitting in...it was breaking my heart to watch her feel so lost.

I can't remember now where I found it, but I know I ordered it about six months before it arrived - ah well, you get what you need.

Here is the beginning of chapter one:

Juliet Jennifer Jones opened the door, stepped out of the toilet and walked straight into her little sister.

'Eight minutes and forty-seven seconds,' said Ophelia, clicking her stopwatch. 'What were you doing in there?'

'Mum!' shrieked Juliet. 'Oaf's timing me in the toilet again!'

When there was no reply, Juliet stomped out of the room.

Ophelia, also known as 'Oaf', smiled quietly to herself, pulled out a yellow pad of paper and carefully wrote 8:47 in the left-hand column. Then she tucked the notepad back into her pocket and went off to find her sister.

Juliet stormed through the house looking for an adult. She went into the lounge room but Mum had her nose in her favourite Shakespearean play.

'Give me five more minutes,' said Mum, 'and then I will speak to thee, I mean, I'll speak to you.'

Juliet rolled her eyes and went in search of Dad.

Dad was in the laundry making a model volcano and she couldn't get him to talk about anything other than lava, ash or explosions. She frowned and went in search of Nana.

Nana lived in the granny flat down the back garden but when Juliet got there, all she found was a note taped to the door of the flat: Gone to craft class. This week: macramé pot holders!

Juliet turned around, huffing. Oaf was standing behind her singing a song she'd learnt in the playground that week. It was called 'The Irritating Song' and you just kept chanting it over and over like this:

Irritating, irritating,
Irritating-tating-tating,
It's the song you'll end up hating
Just 'cos it's so irritating.
That was the first verse. The second verse went like this:
So frustrating, so frustrating,
So frustrating-strating-strating,
It's the song you'll end up hating
Just 'cos it's so [clap] frustrating.

The other twenty-two verses continued on in pretty much the same vein. Oaf really liked that song.
'Irritating, irritating ...'

You can keep reading right up to chaper two here

Anyway....behind the peeling wallpaper in her new bedroom, Juliet uncovers an old painting of a very special tree -- a Worry Tree.

Well my big girl wanted a Worry Tree too. She shut her eyes and wished very hard. I asked a very big favour of a very talented sister in law...who nervous as she was started with a blank wall and...began to paint.

Now this was no small effort, for the most part she had a sleeping baby on her back or a meddling one, sometimes two, in amongst the paint brushes. He is his mummy's boy and does not like to be out of her sight so there was nothing that I could do but bring her cups of tea and treats from the kitchen.

She began painting mid February and put the finishing touches to the wall on Friday just gone. Two months at about two hours at a time, a labour of love... not unlike my quilt!

Wanna see?

Here is Dimitri the dog. When she is worried about family, Dimitri the dog looks after us for her.

This is Wolfgang the wombat, he looks after friend worries.

 Gywneth the goat makes her feel better when she is sick.

Piers the peacock is in charge of minding worries about things she has lost.

Petronella the pig worries about school.

Delia the duck knows it's hard to get used to change - changing houses, schools, new baby sisters... 

Next to Delia is a hole in the trunk ~ sometimes she might have worries that she can't describe; her Worry Tree has a special place for those worries too.

So that the tree really is her Worry Tree it was personalised, with a little big girl shadow and a tiny bird to sing to her, and lilies - sweet lilies of the valley to ring their tiny bells and November lilies with their heavenly scent... a little bit of mossy ground cover...

she LOVES it. We are not quite sure how to thank her beautiful aunt for such a wonderful gift...but we are working on it.

That brings me to a fairy tale...
Last night, just before dinner the very wobbly tooth my big girl has be playing with for absolutely ages finally fell out! How exciting that the tree is finished... I have been plotting since I saw this post at we bloom here.   

While she was admiring her tooth I slipped downstairs and installed a fairy door at the foot of her tree between the lilies of the valley and the soft moss. Fairy doors are miniature portals to middle-earth. By installing one I am inviting fairies, pixies, gnomes and all other wee folk from their world to ours. Fairy doors are magical and cannot be opened by big people.

My big girl has been writing letters to her tooth fairy on tiny little note paper for fours years; they have such wild conversations! Tooth fairy letters need to fit in tiny envelopes like this one.

I just love fantasy and fairytales. I am quite sure my big girl suspects me but when she wakes to find her teeth gone, tiny letters, fairy dust sprinkled in trails and purpose made fairy doors at the foot of a very magical tree...well I think she loves a fairytale too.

*The Worry Tree was Marianne's first published novel and it won the Australian Family Therapists Award for Childrens Literature in 2008 and was shortlisted for the Queenland Premier's Literacy Award for Best Children's book 2008, the Adelaide Festival Award for Children's Literature 2008 and the Australian Children's Literature prize 2007....

Of course when we read it we had no idea about any of that stuff; I found out when we finished and went searching for more books written by her. Fabulously she has, have a look here.