A small girl’s creative walk with her father

This is an original book. Whereas most books for young readers try to involve them in word and meaning, this is a book without words. But it still manages to speak volumes.

Significantly it is dedicated by creator Tatyana Feeney to her own father, so the pages must carry for her a hidden level of trust, affection and perhaps gratitude as well.

So this walk is like countless walks of the same kind familiar to all parents, parent and child encounter Creation together. The narrative line is as simple and charming as possible. A father and daughter set off from their home in the village and walk into the woods which are filled with birds and busy insects, like dragonflies, and curious things to touch and pick up. Among them are flat stones, which the father explains can, with a little dexterity, be skipped across the water of a large pond.

In the pond they can see fish and oddly turtles. One of these comes to hand and is lifted out of the pond by the little girl. She shows it to her father and it runs around among the stones. But eventually it makes its way back into the pond to its mother and its own proper home.

The father and child then make their way out of the trees to their own proper home and the tale ends happily. A simple story, but which can be freely adapted for tale telling, as it’s unprompted by a written text. An inspirational tale of an encounter with Creation.

This is however also a sad book to review. Beehive is the non-fiction and children’s imprint of Veritas, the Catholic publishing house run by the Catholic bishops. It has just announced its closure at the end of this year.

This is a very disheartening moment for all readers in Ireland, for the closure of any publisher, but especially one founded to reach out to all with exposition of a religious outlook, is alarming for all those who love books and reading.

No publisher is an island, one might say, entire unto themselves, so the bell that tolls for Veritas may well be tolling for other Irish publishers too, however confident they may seem. Perhaps the age of reading printed books is coming to an end, marking an epoch in the development, or perhaps in reality, the decline of civilisation.