My Blue Chair

Fran Ashdown was the Head of the Children's Department, Capilano Branch, North Vancouver District Public Library.

An elderly woman (or man, since gender is never specified) chronicles the vicissitudes of the beloved chair created especially for her by her great-grandfather. When the chair is eventually outgrown, it is passed on to neighbors and moves overseas with them. Accidentally carried off to the dump, the chair lies undiscovered for years until an old man comes across it and sells it to a toy shop owner. The refurbished chair is placed in the shop window and the purchaser places it in a special exhibit of children’s chairs where the original owner finally encounters it again.

Aside from a blatantly misplaced modifier (of the “for sale, piano by lady with carved legs” ilk) the writing is adequate. This reviewer has reservations about nostalgia stories for children, since nostalgia is an emotional concept foreign to children, who tend to be forward-looking by nature. Furthermore, there is little drama or excitement in the story, and most children would probably prefer to follow the adventures of an animate object. The American author Vera Williams has dealt much more successfully with this subject in her picture book A Chair for My Mother which has more to do with people and their relationships than with the chair itself.