The Map of Me

This story is narrated by a little girl who has recently moved to a new home in a new country where everything feels strange and unfamiliar. She gets lost when she ventures out, calling the streets ‘a jumble of spaghetti.’ Her empathetic Mum helps her draw a map to enable her to navigate her way around; they include the roads, the supermarket, the school and the flowers by the traffic lights at the corner. But some of the most important things from before the move are not included – her grandmother and Joe-Dog being two.

When Mum mentions that the map isn’t big enough, her daughter decides to make it so large that it covers an entire wall. This enables her to add new things as she finds them – the library, the swings in the park and her new friends, for example. When those friends see the map, they add more things of their own and gradually the distance between everything and everyone seems to diminish and her new house begins to feel like home at last. However, two sad things then happen: Joe-Dog gets sick and dies and the girl’s favourite tree is cut down. Both had been included on the map but it hadn’t kept them safe, so the girl cries herself to sleep that night.

Next morning however she discovers another map on the kitchen wall; it’s large and has been drawn by her dad, showing how things once were. The girl and her friends approve of this and decide to find out more about the past and add to the map other places where their families have lived. This leads to some further thoughts about how things change; some are definitely for the better, others not.

The narrator draws a new map that shows a future that is much greener, her Granny now living nearby, and a puppy. In this enormous world there are no wars, instead it’s ‘full of love and wonder.’ Surely this is the kind of world we all want and need to work towards.

An empowering book about belonging and relating to other people, to share with primary age children whether or not they are experiencing big change in their lives.