The Blanket

The soft and enveloping feeling of a comfort blanket is central to this story, and author and artist Marie Dorleans does extremely well in her depiction of the red woolly blanket Tommy wraps himself up in to feel safe. It protects him in a storm, gives him the courage to try new things at school, and helps him to play with his siblings. Is this going to be enough, however? Tommy finds out as his blanket catches on a bush and unravels while he plays…

There is a lot to ponder in Marie Dorleans’ story here: what are the causes of the protagonist’s anxieties? What was his anxious little life like before he got it? The double page spread that has Tommy perched on an armchair on bare boards with strange shapes on the carpet (shades of the girl in Anthony Browne’s Gorilla)  is heart-wrenching, and the atmospheric room of lightning and shadows that follows is genuinely frightening: where is Tommy? Why is no one comforting him? The answer is on the next page, as he emerges wrapped in the blanket that will be instrumental in the changes he faces. 

With text and artwork so well integrated, The Blanket has many elements of a classic picture book, and is a welcome return to that way of telling stories with detail and textual progression. Witness, for example, the largely unspoken issue of how cumbersome and difficult the blanket is for Tommy, the subtle Red Riding Hood quotations, and the questions raised by what Grandmas is wearing in the comforting, joyful conclusion.This will work with young children and their anxieties, but would also be a text for older children to pore over.