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The lines on his left index finger? Jeffers’ wife Suzanne was biting him so hard as she gave birth to their daughter Mari, he thought she would break the skin (though he was given short shrift by the doctors when he interrupted the labour to say he was in pain). “The next day,” he says, “I still had those big indentations and I thought, ‘There’s something nice about that.’ So I had her teeth marks tattooed in that place.”
Children will love his playbook for building a future of love and imagination, and they will delight in the special relationship the father and daughter share." -- Booklist Nonetheless, even while despairing about the “tribal thinking” of the Brexit negotiations, Jeffers retains a bouncy hopefulness. “I have described myself in the past as a grim optimist,” he says. “And even when I’m pointing out dark things, I still think there’s a lightness of touch there because otherwise I’d just be a nihilist. And what’s the point in hopelessness?” It’s as much about what you read into it as what Jeffers tells us. So adults and small children alike will be able to connect with the words and the characters.In rhymes, Jeffers also shows us the family they create together, a dad and girl curled up at night by a fire, a pair using their imaginations to ‘play’ games where they visit the moon.
His 2018 work My Northern Irish Passport showed a travel document bearing the words: “United Kingdom of Great Britain and … eh ... Is there supposed to be another bit?” He says: “That was part of a show I had in London after the Brexit vote. A review in an art magazine at the time didn’t even get it. I was, like, that just proves the point.” The striking illustrations in Jeffers’ instantly-recognisable signature style are simply delightful and so detailed that each time of reading you will notice something new. Young children will enjoy spotting the little pink pig throughout the story and the penguin, a well-loved recurring character in Jeffers’ books makes an appearance.Purples and pinks dominate in this beautiful book that speaks of a father and daughter as they dream, plan and build for the future. The text rhymes and is written as a poem. It is also about relationships – that between the male figure and the young girl, but also about solving problems, forgiveness, and dealing with anger. The father-daughter duo build their home, the only material thing they construct, and then they invest their time in the importance of building love, hope, resilience, forgiveness and warmth. The tools are laid out at the very beginning, a selection of hammers, saws, drills (and a tiny pink pig!) from a shiny, red toolbox but we come to realise that the real ‘tools’ we need as parents when building our futures together are trust, comfort, compassion, unconditional love. The toolbox appears throughout the book as if to remind us that we carry these tools around with us on our parenting journey.
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