4. A book in which the main character is under 9 years old

[Martha]

A list of books narrated by children - note that not all will be children under 9 years old
Popular Child Narrators

Books narrated by children who are 9 or under

Room
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
To Kill a Mockingbird
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Book Thief
Our Endless Numbered Days

Discussion prompts
- What did you / will you read for this task? What do you think of it?
- What makes child-narrated books different from adult-narrated books?
- How can telling a story from the perspective of a child help to tackle complex and/or challenging subjects?

[Martha]

For this task I read The Icarus Girl, where the main character Jessamy is eight-years-old.

It was an odd one! I enjoyed the author's style of writing very much, but the plot was very strange and by the end, I wasn't 100% clear on what had gone on! That may have been deliberate, but I'm generally rubbish with ambiguity so I like to have things explained. See review here

One of the things I love about books narrated by children is the innocence and naivety which means that you're forced to look at things with a blank slate and see them for what they are, rather than what you've been conditioned to believe as you've grown up.

In the same way, it means you can sometimes approach really horrible subjects without being dragged down into something horrifying or depressing. For example, Room is the story of a woman who has been kidnapped and repeatedly abused; but because it's told from Jack's point of view, there's a new layer of light and shade that prevents it from becoming too horrific to read, while still retaining the seriousness of what's happened to him and Ma.

In the case of The Icarus Girl, the story was about Jessamy as opposed to her being used as a lens through which to tell the story; but it highlighted the way in which childhood innocence can allow them to experience this huge spectrum of what "real" is - magic, ghosts, etc. - and the way in which adults desperately try to diminish it in order to understand and categorise it.