Kyo Maclear

When her sister succumbs to a mood that makes the whole family feel topsy-turvy, Vanessa paints a wonderful imaginary place--a beautiful garden complete with a ladder and a swing--in a story loosely based on the writer Virginia Woolf and her artist sister, Vanessa Bell.

Virginia Wolf

Deepika Ramesh

Eighty-one years ago, on this day, with her overcoat pockets hanging heavy with stones, Virginia Woolf walked into River Ouse and never returned. In Kyo Maclear and Isabella Arsenault’s ‘Virginia Wolf’, a book written and illustrated for young readers, loosely based on Virginia Woolf and her sister, Vanessa says Virginia wakes up feeling wolfish one morning. 

By now, the wordplay in the last name may have caught your attention. The book imagines a conversation that Virginia and Vanessa could have had when Virginia began to feel wolfish when she was a child. As Vanessa inquires, from a place of empathy and compassion, Virginia reveals what could make her feel better. Vanessa creates it, in her own ways, using art supplies in their room, bringing Virginia’s favourite outside scene inside. Virginia begins to feel better and returns from being a dress-clad black wolf with a bushy tail to her own self. The focus needs to be on the unconditional acceptance Vanessa extends to Virginia and not on what she does to make Virginia feel better; the focus needs to be on her love and bravery to see Virginia as her wolfish self. That’s what Virginia would have needed — not ‘Bloomsberry’ as a perfect place, but as a symbol, as an acknowledgment of her struggle with her mental health and to be told that it’s okay and that she is seen.

Everyone, children and adults, wakes up feeling wolfish many mornings. As the wheels of capitalism run and run, we don’t pause to check in. But what a beautiful place this world would be if we sat with our black-wolf selves longer!

Virginia Wolf

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