Free The Girl Who Couldn't Smile by Shane Dunphy Page A

enlargements of the pictures made so they could all see them, and Susan held them up one by one. The story is simple: Peter Rabbit, his sisters, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, and his mother live in arabbit hole under a fir-tree. Mother Rabbit has forbidden her children to enter the garden of Mr McGregor, a local small-holder , because their father had met his untimely end there and become the main ingredient of a pie. However, while Mrs Rabbit is shopping and the girls are collecting blackberries, Peter, rebellious soul that he is, sneaks into the garden. There, he gorges on vegetables until he gets sick, and is chased by Mr McGregor. When Peter loses his jacket and shoes, Mr McGregor uses them to dress a scarecrow. Eventually Peter escapes and returns to his mother, exhausted and feeling ill. She puts him to bed with a dose of camomile tea while his sisters (who have been good little bunnies) enjoy bread and milk and blackberries for supper.
    The children listened, transfixed. I love telling stories, and find myself getting lost in them just as much as the children. Storytelling should be a performance, and I make a point of giving each character a different voice and the occasional gesture – children have a remarkable memory for such features, pointing out to me on repeat tellings if I get a voice wrong.
    I chose Peter Rabbit as our first ‘big’ story because I know that children can identify with him. He is inherently a good soul, just a bit excitable and naughty, but not in a malicious way. He steals the contents of Mr McGregor’s garden, but he is a rabbit, and is only doing what he is programmed to do.
    Despite walking upright and wearing his blue jacket, the images of him in the book are all anatomically correct – he is clearly a wild rabbit, just like the ones my audience saw almost every day, and that eased things, too. This was not a story about trolls or goblins or even lions and tigers: it dealt with things that the kids had only to look outside their kitchen windows to see.
    When I was finished, I put the book down, but Susan and I laid the pictures out in sequence on the floor, so the children could follow them as a kind of photo-essay while we talked.
    ‘Do you think Peter is a good rabbit?’ I asked.
    ‘No, not good,’ Jeffrey said flatly. ‘Bold boy.’
    ‘Why do you think he’s bad?’ I asked.
    ‘Mammy say,’ Jeffrey was puffing and panting with the effort of expressing what he wanted to articulate, ‘no steal.’
    ‘If I was a rabbit,’ Lonnie said, ‘and I passed a garden full of lovely fresh veg, I think I’d find it very hard not to go in and take some.’
    ‘Berries,’ Jeffrey said.
    ‘That’s right,’ I agreed. ‘His sisters went out and picked blackberries, didn’t they? So there was food that could be taken without having to steal.’
    ‘And his mammy worried about him goin’ in that garden,’ Gus said.
    ‘Why did she worry, Gus?’ Tush asked.
    ‘Because Peter’s dad had an accident in there,’ Gus said.
    ‘What kind of accident, do you think?’ Susan asked.
    The group sat quietly, thinking about that.
    ‘Well, in the story, it says his daddy ended up in a great big pie,’ Mitzi said. ‘How could that have happened?’
    ‘Mr M’Gregor,’ Ross said. ‘He kilt ’im, I’d say.’
    ‘Why would he want to do that?’ I asked.
    ‘Peter robbin’ the veg’ables,’ Rufus said.
    ‘So do you think Mr McGregor is right to try and kill Peter, and to kill and eat his father?’ I asked.
    I was met with a resounding silence. This was far too complex a moral dilemma for the group. The problem was clear: it was naughty of Peter to steal the vegetables because stealing is wrong and therefore should be punished. Yet Peter was a nice rabbit, and the children felt a strong sense ofsolidarity with him. How then was it all right for anyone to kill either Peter or members of his family, even to eat them for dinner?
    Arga was looking at the picture of a Peter who, having