Rebecca Recommends: 'My Name Is Mina' By David Almond

‘My Name is Mina’ is the journal of a girl called Mina. It cannot be defined as a simple day to day recording of her life but is instead, a vibrant mash of thoughts, dreams, stories, poems, scribblings and nonsense! The book is wild and unpredictable, just like Mina herself. She likes to write down strange words that she loves, poems of being an owl in the night, stories of her journey to the “underworld”, extraordinary facts about the earth we live on and her thoughts on the people she watches from high up in her tree. 

Although joyful and enthusiastic, Mina is a loner who is considered to be strange and while this can be confusing to her at times, she also takes great pride in it. Her journal is about seeing things from a different perspective and Mina encourages the reader to break out of their thinking with her suggestions for ‘extraordinary activities.’ Touch the tip of your index finger to the tip of your thumb to make a ring, look through it to the night sky and consider all the unimaginable space within it! Fly in your sleep! Stare at the dust that dances in the light! Write a page of nonsense! 

Mina encourages her mind to be free and rich and messy for she knows that is what the world is. She sees in all things, a wild and chaotic beauty. While she likes to get wonderfully lost in her imagination, I found her to be more grounded in reality than those characters who think they are. She is a young rebel and a free spirit and so is baffled by the rigidity and order that is enforced in her schooling and in the adult world. 

Although just an imaginary character, Mina felt real to me. This speaks volumes of the talent of David Almond who manages to capture not only the spirit of a child but of a young girl. I recognised so much of myself in her, parts of myself that I’ve misplaced and am now frantically searching for in the dusty corners of my mind, for in my adulthood, I see just how precious they are. I was overjoyed to find her again for Mina is the inner child, the irrepressible spirit that we were all suppose to hold on to tightly from our childhood and that somehow, we often lose sight of through the years. 

‘My Name is Mina’ is a creative, uplifting and moving read that celebrates the wild and glorious experience of life through the wide open eyes of a child. I could not recommend it more highly, not only for children but for adults too.

Hodder Children's Books (2010)

For more information, please check out: http://www.davidalmond.com