'Blossom has grown up surrounded by the beautiful pants and flowers from her family's market stall. The stall was started by her grandparents, Tutu and Pops, who passed it on to Blossom's parents. It's a magical place where customers come to find flowers for all occasions - from celebrating love to offering comfort in times of sorrow. But now the stall is at risk as Blossom's parents argue about the future. an Blossom find a way to cope with the dramatic changes that are happening around her - and can she save the flower stall?'
Blossom tells the story of a young girl whose life is changed following the sudden death of her beloved grandparents, and how the legacy they have left behind comes close to breaking her struggling family apart.
Shortly after starting the book we learn that Blossom and her family have recently been through a tragedy; their beloved grandmother, Tutu, fell ill, so ill that there was nothing that could be done to save her. Shortly after she passed away her husband, Pops, passed on too, dying from a broken heart. I was honestly surprised to see a children's book so openly dealing with a subject like grief, to tackle death and loss in such a head-on manner; but this was just the beginning of what proved to be a number of heavy subjects that Laura Dockrill would cover in the book.
After losing Tutu and Pops, Blossom and her parents inherited their beloved plants, plants which soon filled their small flat. More importantly, however, they also inherited the market stall that they'd owned for more than fifty years. A long standing part of the local flower market, Blossom's dad is determined to keep the stall running. Unfortunately, this results in a lot of work for him and his wife; work that comes at a bad time as Blossom's mum had recently quit her job to go back to college to chase her dream of becoming a scientist.
With the flower stall taking up all of their time, and Blossom's mother having to work late into the night to try to even keep up with her school work, her parents relationship begins to fray at the edges. Despite them trying to keep this from Blossom she can see that her parents are struggling, and when they end up being caught in a full argument by Blossom she learns that her mother has given her father an ultimatum, get rid of the stall, or lose her.
With the stall meaning everything to Blossom, with her hope and dreams for the future being tied up into it, she feels betrayed by her mother, she fears that her family is going to fall apart, and she's worried that the thing that connects her to her lost grandparents is about to be lost forever. Now Blossom's determined to find a way of saving the stall, as well as keeping her family together.
Blossom not only deals with grief, as very evidently laid out early on in the book, but deals with the often unspoken about topic of fracturing family. We often see media aimed at kids featuring separated parents, but this usually tends to be family that has already split apart. Blossom, in contrast, puts the readers into the middle of family turmoil. Blossom actually sees the moment her mother and father come to the realisation that they might separate, and it's something that breaks her emotionally.
We get to see the effect that this has on Blossom, we see the myriad of emotions that flood through her, the pain she feels, the sense of betrayal. She centres herself and her own concerns and has to come to see how her parents are their own people, with their own dreams and goals who have already sacrificed a lot and just want some happiness. In a lot of ways the book shatters that childhood illusion that children have about being the centre of the world, and Blossom does a lot of growing up over the course of the book.
The story isn't all emotional turmoil though, as there's a lot of fun to be had whilst reading this. Dockrill goes out of her way to try and fill the pages with a sense of fun and wonder, and makes you look at the beauty of plants in a new way. It helps to balance out the darker moments, and shows how life itself is varied and how light and dark are both things that you have to live with.
There are also some great illustrations scattered throughout the book, provided by Sarah Ogilvie. Ogilvie's style works wonderfully with the story, and each illustration is filled with wild and wonderful plants and flowers that loom over the characters.
Blossom is a book that had a lot more substance to it than I was expecting, but it's dealing with some important and often unspoken topics. I think it's important that kids not only know that thing like family loss and the break down of relationships happen, but that if they do happen it's something that isn't your fault, and that life can go on afterwards. I think for these reasons Blossom is going to be one of those books that sticks with the reader for a long while afterwards, and one that will mean a lot to young readers.
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