Book Review: Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park

Playing Beatie Bow is an Australian Children’s book written by Ruth Park. The story takes place in Sydney, Australia where Park had spent most of her adult years living.

As I began reading this novel, I did not know what to expect. It started off with a fourteen-year-old girl named Abigail. Within the first few pages we learn that her father is a king, but he soon left her mother for another woman. Months after her father had left, Abigail and her mother moved into a unit that the King had given them. That was where Abigail had met her neighbors, the Crowns. Abigail had brought the Crown kids, Natalie and Vincent, to the playground. While they are there, they see the children playing a game called “Beatie Bow.” Vincent bugs his older sister about not playing the game because she is too scared of it. However, when Vincent plays Park, the author writes, “‘I saw the little furry girl, Vince said Natalie. She was watching you all again’” (Park, 12). When Abigail takes the children back to the Crowns unit next door, she begins helping Natalie make new clothes for her teddy bear. Then, she found a piece of old crochet that she wanted to use for her dress. Soon after she cleaned it up and sewed it onto her new dress she made to finish it up. The next day, she takes Natalie back over to the playground where they decided to approach the little furry girl and have a conversation, but instead the girl instantly runs away. The next day when she is wearing her dress she gets off the bus and see the little furry girl again and is reminded of Natalie. Abigail then approaches her again and she takes off, but Abigail follows her. As she is chasing after her, she sees that she has transferred into a new place where she feels as if she is dreaming. Soon Abigail realizes that she is in the same city and town in Sydney, Australia, but she has gone back in time. While she was there she realized a lot about herself and became close with a new family. When she is ready to return she is unable to without her dress that she made that is hidden by the family. She spends her time figuring out what her purpose for being back there was and needs to fulfil it to get her dress back and come back to her present time.

As I read the book I noticed that it was a story I have never seen before about love. At the beginning of the book we see that Abigail’s father had left her and her mother for another woman. That had hurt Abigail very much and she did not like to see that her mother letting her father come back into their lives a few years later. Her mother explained to her that she was too young to understand what love was yet and that she hadn’t experienced it. While Abigail is stuck back in time, she falls for a boy named Judah. When something had went wrong, she had to give something up for Judah. She begins to see what her mother has meant all along about being in love and how strong it is. When Abigail was still young, right when her father left her, she thought that her father leaving left an empty space inside of her. Parks writes, “But now she wasn’t a kid she knew that it wasn’t the absence of her father that caused an empty place inside. It was a part of her and she didn’t know what it was or why it was there” (Parks, 8). Judah had filled that space for her at one point in time, but when she was back in her normal time she had felt the emptiness again. Throughout the book, she finds out more about herself and realizes that she keeps herself distant from the people that love her, and that is what causes the empty place inside of her. She realized that it is her fault that there is an empty space inside of herself because of not letting the people that love her in. I think this is important for children to read and understand in books in order to make sure that they are able to do the same for themselves. It shows the readers that it is a good thing to open up and let people in, so they do not exclude themselves, leading them to feel the empty and isolated.

Another great feature to this novel is the imagination of time traveling. This book shows Abigail going back in time to her same city where everything was different. It also correlates to her personally because her mother owns a older shop with things that she sees when she goes back in time. The book does a great job at making you feel as if you went back into the year 1872 with Abigail. It could tell a lot of children about what the time was like back in those years and gives an accurate description of what people wore and how everything was. As a reader this keeps the audience’s imagination growing throughout the book. I remember reading books about time travel when I was younger and thinking it was so realistic. This book still kept me thinking about being back in that time and did a very good job at making it feel realistic.

Overall I enjoyed the book very much and think that it is a great read for children between the age of 10-12 years old. I believe that this book would be too challenging for children under the age 10 years old. I would also say that this is a great read for adults as well. It is a book that keeps you very interested and is very hard to put down for a break.

Reference:

Park, Ruth. Playing Beatie Bow. ReadHowYouWant, 2015.