Marlies Slegers (1965) lived in Indonesia for ten years in her youth. She became a full-time children’s writer after her son was born and wrote more than 25 books. Slegers is best known for popular series such as ‘Hockeyteam De Sterren’ and ‘I Love Liv’ and for cool teen books about subjects such as sexting and binge drinking. In Notes for Pelle, she successfully takes a very different tack.
(Luitingh-Sijthoff, 2020, 232 pages)
‘It sometimes seemed like there was less and less air in the house every day,’ says 12-year-old Pelle about the claustrophobic atmosphere since his dad passed away a year ago. He wonders when grief actually comes to an end. His dad used to say his mum’s eyes were the colour of the Aegean Sea, but ‘over the past year, Mum had cried the entire Aegean empty’. But then she gives Pelle a shoebox full of notes from his dad. Every week he gets to open one and do whatever the note says.
