What can we read when we're all ill?

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Everyone in our family has had flu and I wondered if there were any books about being stuck in bed and feeling poorly?

Responding to anyone in exactly the right way when they are ill is always difficult – especially if they are a child. Sometimes it is easy to see at a glance just how ill someone is; at other times it is hard to know whether to encourage more or less.

The well-known rhyme Miss Polly had a Dolly (and the interactive version in Miss Polly had a Dolly Touch and Sing Board Book) may be too relentlessly cheerful for some but it does have a jollity about it that can be cheering – and it does offer some advice about looking after yourself. “Polly had a Dolly who was sick, sick sick/ So she phoned for the doctor to come quick, quick, quick./ The doctor came with his bag and his hat,/ And knocked at the door with a rat-a-tat-tat. He looked at Miss Polly and he shook his head/ And he said ‘Miss Polly put her straight to bed”/ He wrote a paper for a pill, pill, pill/ “I’ll be back in the morning with the bill, bill, bill”. Children will find the bill, bill, bill bit amusing/puzzling too.

AA Milne’s poem Sneezles is in much the same vein and includes some excellent word-play such as “They wondered/ If wheezles/ Could turn/ Into measles,/ If sneezles/ Would turn/Into mumps”.

For greater reflection on being sympathetic to others who are ill and looking after them Karma Wilson’s Bear Feels Sick, illustrated by Jane Chapman, has a kindly and caring tone. Bear is too ill to go out to play. All his friends - Mole, Hare and Mouse – give up their own fun to help make Bear comfortable. The story captures the way being ill makes you feel and the need for anyone who is ill to be treated kindly.

A similar theme is at the heart of Philip C Stead’s award-winning A Sick Day for Amos McGee, illustrated by Erin Stead. Amos McGee is a zoo keeper who loves the animals in his care. Every day he gets up early to make sure he can be at the zoo in time to look after the elephant, the tortoise, the rhinoceros, the owl who is afraid of the dark and the shy penguin in the best possible way. One day Amos McGee doesn’t turn up for work. Anxious as to why, the animals set off for his home to find out why. Each then puts aside their own needs and fears to help Amos McGee get back to good health. The inversions of a carer being cared for is nicely played out in a story that is also amusingly impossible.

The carer falling sick is not always so satisfactorily resolved.

The wide-ranging effects of mum being ill are excellently captured in Jill Murphy’s Mr Large in Charge. The Large family of elephants first appear in Peace at Last, a classic title about the imaginative lengths the elephant parents have to go to find somewhere quite to sleep. In Mr Large in Charge, Mrs Large is too ill to keep going and so Mr Large sends her back to bed and promises to keep everything in order. He gets the children hoovering and cleaning but somehow, things to not go quite according to plan! Can mums ever really be given time off to be ill?

The most extreme result of illness – the need to go to hospital – is excellently captured in Tony Ross’s Little Princess title I don’t want to go to hospital. Having done everything she possibly can to avoid having to go the hospital, the Little Princess finds life there isn’t as bad as she feared. In fact, she is treated just like a Princess!

At the opposite end of the spectrum, how it feels to have a cold and how to manage it is simply captured in Peppa Pig: George Catches a Cold. Atishoo! Let’s hope all colds are better soon.

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