Mama's Going to Buy You a Mockingbird

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including The
Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret
Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

This revised edition of a work first published in 1984 will interest
young readers who have experienced a death in the family. The four
central characters compose the Talbot family: Mum, Dad, Sarah, 7, and
Jeremy, 11.

Aunt Margery has a cottage that provides the setting for the opening
scene, as the children’s father arrives back from a long period in
hospital. Woods near her cottage afford Dad, Jeremy, and Sarah with the
sighting of an owl, a very special moment for a family keen on
birdwatching.

A sixth character, 16-year-old Tess Medford, lives with her grandfather
and is considered “weird” by most classmates because she is older
and wears baggy “old-lady” dresses. Dad tells Jeremy she will be in
his class next fall, and that if Jeremy would try to make friends with
her, then others would follow. Jeremy is appalled.

Dad goes shopping in Bracebridge and buys Jeremy a small polished-stone
owl, a precious memento of their shared experience. A nearby cottager
whose part-Siamese cat has just had kittens insists on giving one to
Sarah. Then Dad weakens and must return to hospital. News of his death
occurs halfway through the novel, but the rich experiences and
comforting objects that the children received in their father’s last
days have strengthened them and prepared them for the loss. The story
ends months later at Christmastime, with the Talbots and the Medfords
shopping together. The Talbots have moved to a smaller apartment next to
Tess and her grandfather, and Tess is now permitted to wear jeans. That
Christmas, the first without Dad, Jeremy takes steps toward acting like
the man of the house; he rearranges the stocking gifts by giving
“Hoot,” his precious memory of his last days with his father at the
cottage, to his mother.

This is perhaps Jean Little’s most complex novel, with a relatively
long time span that allows for character development in both children
and adults. In addition to a mature theme, the death of a parent, the
book features a subplot built around an outsider who becomes an accepted
friend in the end. The broad range of emotions encompassed by this
novel—one of Little’s best— prompts both laughter and tears.
Highly recommended.