Persephone’s Mushrooms

Persephone’s Mushrooms is a story written in poetic prose. It follows the growing stages of two young trees in their woodland home, and how they experience their own changes as the seasons change their environment. The deeper one reads through the book, the more the sentence length increases, and the vocabulary gradually becomes more advanced (skip ahead to the bold text below for more details on this method).

The message of this book is one about exercising patience and fostering resilience to bullying through learning to nurture ones’ strengths and unique traits. It also emphasises that superficial beauty does not necessarily convey good character or health, and that inner beauty and surprises can be found in undesirable traits. There is also a theme of redemption, forgiveness, and moving forward from past troubles. As the reader flips through the pages, the illustrations show the subtle environmental changes that occur every few weeks, taking them through crisp autumn skies, to a frigid and icy winter, then to blooming spring days.

My strategy is meant to start young readers off with more confidence in their reading. The incremental complexity only becomes noticeable once the reader reaches the middle of the book, but by then, they are lead by curiosity as to what happens in the end, and finish the book, especially since the ending is within sight.

A glossary of difficult words is provided for convenience, although great care has been taken to allow readers to use the context of the sentences and visual cues provided in the illustrations to surmise the meanings of unfamiliar words, or at least, to get the main picture of the story. Young readers are encouraged to try to figure out the meanings of complex words through all contextual clues, prior to checking the provided glossary.