Atlas and Skye

The titular characters in this gentle and affecting tale are ten-year-olds who meet for the first time at school, when Atlas joins Skye’s class. He has moved to live with his grandfather, who needs extra care from his family now that he has begun to suffer from Alzheimer’s. Atlas’ anxieties about his grandfather losing his memories create a bond with Skye, who has recently lost her beloved grandmother and fears she is losing her own memories of her. Effectively told in alternating verse and prose chapters, which effectively emphasises their distinct voices and further helped by the detailed and characterful illustrations, which are actually a nice link to the grandfather’s career as an illustrator, we are given a real insight into their anxiety and confusion. We presume they have also both lost a father figure at some point, because neither apparently has one around and Skye is deeply upset by her beloved elder sister moving out to university. A further similarity is that Atlas has always struggled to make friends and Skye’s best friend has seemed to abandon her.   Skye takes charge of their quest to find a way to reawaken his grandfather’s memories by following clues that Atlas has found in is grandfather’s studio. Skye’s plans are reckless in the extreme, but Atlas feels he needs to prove he can be brave. They only succeed in frightening themselves and all those around them, but the resulting powerful discussions with their respective families bring them to understand that things do change and some things cannot be fixed, but with love, resilience and friendship, they can face the future together. Despite stretching an adult reader’s credulity a bit on their quest and with Skye’s very unlikely school hiding places, this is a comforting, heartwarming story for youngsters experiencing loss or the deteriorating health of a loved-one. The depiction of the grandfather’s condition is particularly sensitively and authentically handled. As a class reader for children of 8 and above it will stimulate some valuable discussions about coping with loss and change and about what makes a good friend.