Letters from the Upside

Katya Balen’s Letters from the Upside is another heartfelt and hopeful story from one of the best writers of contemporary children’s fiction. It’s about anger, forgiveness, and the small, surprising ways that people, places and nature can help you heal.

Con’s dad has left, and it’s just him and his mum now. He’s angry all the time: angry at his dad for going, angry at his mum for struggling, angry at himself for not being able to stop losing it. His temper scares everyone around him, even his best friend, and when a fight at school gets him excluded, Con knows he’s gone too far. He doesn’t want to be this way, but he doesn’t know how to change.

Then, on one of those long, lonely days at home, Con meets Mr Williams, a neighbour who shows him something unexpected: a secret rooftop garden called the Upside. It’s a place full of green life, colour, and calm and is a world away from the noise and frustration of his everyday life. On the Upside, Con starts to breathe again. He helps care for Mr Williams’s homing pigeons, learns to be gentle, and feels the peace that comes with looking after something that depends on you. When Mr Williams goes away and Con takes charge of the pigeons himself, he comes up with a plan to find his dad with the flying messages the pigeons carry.

But when the Upside is discovered by people who don’t understand its beauty, everything Con has built starts to crumble and the dreams and the calm are destroyed. Con feels like he’s lost the last chance he had, but there is hope in the community around him.

What makes this book sing is Balen’s gift for getting inside her characters’ heads. Con feels utterly real and is confused, furious, funny, and vulnerable all at once. The story moves with energy and warmth, full of moments that remind readers how caring for something outside yourself; a garden, a bird, a person can help you find your way back. Gentle, powerful, and full of heart, Letters from the Upside is a story about growing through what hurts and finding calm and community in unexpected places.