Something Special by Emily Rodda

Reviewed by Antonella Townsend

When a book reappears after forty years it just has to be something special.  So, Emily Rodda’s debut novel Something Special is aptly titled having been a children’s fantasy favourite for many years, winning the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year for Younger Readers Award in 1985.  Although classified as a novel, its sixty-four pages is more novella.  An ideal length for young readers.

In Something Special, Emily Rodda applies her imagination to the subject of clothes.  An understated fantasy where the normal gently morphs into abnormal creating a believable magic that holds truth, namely that some clothes inhabit the character and memories of their owners.  Or, it occurred, do the clothes imbue the spirit of the designer’s flair, perhaps an amalgam?

The storyline revolves around a family collecting second-hand clothes for a school fete.  Sam is helping her mother, who has taken on the task for the first time.  It’s all a bit chaotic at first, boxes of clothes being dumped on the door step.  But together they bring order to chaos.  When all clothes are hanging neatly in the spare room Sam moves amongst the racks touching the different fabrics and senses the memories and magic that they hold.  Exhausted she falls asleep on an old chair in the room and dreams of previous owners seeing how their personalities match the clothes.

At the fete the next day she witnesses the magic of the clothes, how they attract certain people and realises that her dream was more magic than a dream.

A timeless story about mystery and imagination in everyday life.

Something Special  (40th Anniversary Edition)

By Emily Rodda

(1984)

Harper Collins

Paperback

ISBN: 978 1 46076 641 5

$17.95; 64pp

 

 

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