The Day My Father Became a Bush by Joke van Leeuwen

Ages 9+ | 215 x 135mm | 104 pages | Paperback with flaps $19.99 | ISBN: 978-1-877579-16-5 - Gecko Press

A clear-eyed and off-beat illustrated novel about a girl surviving in a baffling world at war. From the author/ illustrator of Eep!.

Before he becomes a bush, Toda’s father is a pastry chef. He gets up at the crack of dawn to bake twenty different sorts of pastries and three kinds of cake. Until, one day, everything changes. Fighting breaks out in the south and Toda’s father has to go there to defend his country. Luckily he has a manual called ‘What every soldier needs to know’. This tells him how to hide from the enemy by using branches and leaves to disguise himself as a bush.

Toda remains in the city with her grandmother but even there it’s no longer safe. She is sent to stay with her mother who lives across the border. Toda’s journey is full of adventure and danger. But she doesn’t give up. She has to find her mother. 

“There is more emotion and character packed into this little book than some authors put in to 300 pages. It can stand alongside John Boyne’s The Boy in Striped Pyjamas and Ian Serraillier’s The Silver Sword as a must-read war story.” —Zac Harding, My Best Friends Are Books blog, Christchurch City Libraries

The author Joke van Leeuwen (1952) studied history at the University of Brussels, performs in cabaret and theatre shows, writes stories and poems for children, which she illustrates herself, and writes prose and poetry for adults. She has received innumerable awards, including the prestigious Theo Thijssen Prize, the triennial Dutch State Prize for youth literature.