I once got in trouble during gym class for sneaking a book into the outfield during baseball (I’d hidden it under my shirt when we were changing). I also read literally all the time: at breakfast in the morning, on the school bus, under my desk instead of listening to the math lesson, in the bath. I had a bottomless appetite when it came to reading materials, by which I mean that if I didn’t have a book nearby I would resort to the backs of cereal boxes or the weird ads in the yellow pages. The term “voracious reader” is clichéd, but it’s the most accurate one to describe what I was like as a kid. Furlong’s Juniper, an independent-minded woman with supernatural healing skills living in a dream cottage full of magic, was different. Even in books, mothers were mostly just background noise fathers were at least allowed to be funny or have quirky hobbies, but mothers rarely seemed to have inner lives. Although I had a vague sense at the time that I wanted to have kids one day, none of my concrete experiences of what motherhood looked like made it seem all that appealing. I was ten or eleven the first time I read it, and I didn’t think about mothers much beyond the fact that they were just sort of there-often harried, overworked, and tired, but useful if you needed a meal or a hug. Monica Furlong’s Wise Child was the first time I ever saw a mother that I wanted to be. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.
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