What is a lockdown? What are looms? What do these words mean to you? What can you do with them?
If you are a child, young enough and old enough to attend primary school, a lockdown might mean learning at home, at least at times, learning with a personal computer, large or small, on a desk or in a hand, with your teacher’s face and voice coming through a screen and a speaker.
If you are that child, your looms are the tales you can tell about these unusual times, these odd days when lessons online compete for your time with consoles and crafts, socially-distanced walks in woods and memories that are both strange and special...like birthday parties in a pandemic...
...like Reggie’s birthday party, as presented by Banji Alexander in his latest book, the first of a planned series of Lockdown Looms...
Lockdown Looms: Reggie’s Birthday Party is a delightfully illustrated, deliciously written tale of a boy celebrating his eighth birthday during the COVID-19 pandemic. So many of the children reading this should easily and instantly relate to our young protagonist‘s experiences. Here’s why lockdown looms like Lockdown Looms capture so clearly the pandemic experiences of so many children…
This edition of Lockdown Looms presents Reggie at home, in bed and wrapped in his blanket, clearly unready for remote learning, much to his mum’s irritation. He has already developed a habit of turning up late for virtual lessons, and he had already developed a dislike of his class teacher. Regrettably, his class teacher, it seems, has developed a dislike of him.
However, Reggie has realised whilst remote learning that he actually misses Miss Woolly-Stockings as much as he misses the other kids in her class, as much as he misses school life in general. And, what’s worse, lockdown means he might miss out on having a birthday party when he turns eight. He misses his dad, who hasn’t been home for months, he misses his friend’s grandma, who succumbed to the coronavirus, and he misses the sanity of supermarket shopping in simpler times, when people didn’t panic over packets of pasta.
Reggie’s Birthday Party is a reflective tale. It is a story that children will find fascinating and interesting, and will help them to think through these strange days, when we haven’t always had what we wanted, and haven’t always been as close to each other as we would have liked. It is an entertaining tale that can help our children to think about what really matters, and who really matters, in their young lives.
‘Reggie’s Birthday Party’, the first in a planned series of Lockdown Looms, is available to buy from https://banjialexander.com.