Tag: oliver jeffers

The Meaning, Magic & Moral of Oliver Jeffers’ “How To Catch A Star” to a girl who loved stars very, very much

A story that has stayed with me for close to 17 years is the children’s picture book  “How to Catch a Star” by Oliver Jeffers.

In my experience, stories imprint on us due to a) the quality of the story/author/storyteller, b) the emotion or moral the story elicits AND c) timing. We hear stories or songs and see pictures or video differently at different times in our lives because of the emotion, the nostalgia, the memories and the connection we feel to the story or characters in those moments. The story/words/dialogue don’t change between repeat listening, reading or viewing, but our experiences have. 

In 2006 two important things had changed for me. I had moved from my high school English classroom to the library, where I become the librarian for a K-Gr.12 school of 800 students in Winnipeg, and my first child had just turned two.

These two events created the perfect work/home life scenario. I was exploring new authors and illustrators, reading Caldecott winning picture books, and finding new series and characters that had emerged between the time of me being a kid and learning to read in the 1980’s, to me having a kid who was starting to understand the concept of reading, books, and bedtime stories. I came home with armloads every night for him and I to discover. We found “How to Catch a Star” and I was hooked – so much so that two years later when his sister arrived and took up residence in the “nursery” his “big boy room” was inspired by the book. 

“How to Catch a Star” was written and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers. Jeffers’ illustration style is recognized for it’s unique and instantly identifiable use of minimalism, mixed media and open space composition. It is simultaneously simplistic and bold – holding the reader’s attention but not distracting or overstimulating the reader from the protagonist’s simple but important quest. 

The protagonist is a young boy. He is only ever referred to a “the boy”, making him both a real character but also a blank canvass in which the reader can imagine “childhood” conceptually. 

What do we know about the boy? Very little. He was a boy. And he loved stars very much. He loved stars so much he decided to try and catch a star of his very own.

Who wouldn’t want a star of their very own?

It is the boy’s undeniable innocence but complete rationale that makes him so endearing. He knows catching a star will be hard so he makes a plan to get up at dawn, when the star will be most tired from shining all night long, making it easier to catch. But the star disappears on him. So he patiently waits all day, weighing his options “that didn’t work” and reformulating his plan in a textbook example of “because of that…” described in  Ken Adams’ story spine structure. The only hint that the boy is imagining this all in his head and not serious in his quest is when he remembers he can’t take his rocketship up to the star because it ran out of gas when he flew to the moon last week. But he is patient and persistent and purposeful. And we want him to succeed, even though we know he won’t.. As with Pixar’s 1st of 22 rules, we admire him for trying, despite knowing success is impossible.

And then he sees a star in the water. And through Jeffers’ illustration we see it too – and it’s oddly emotional. We are startled it never occurred to us to look anywhere but the sky. We are excited for the boy. Hopeful that his wonder and belief in all things possible is reaffirmed. Sad because we know that he will not catch this star either. But his quest continues. He is still just a little boy who loves stars very much, walking up and down the sand waiting for his star to wash up on shore. So we let him believe. There’s no harm.

But then, with a magic normally reserved for Hallmark Christmas movies, there it is!! A star laying on the beach! His star. A star of his very own… 

And we are happy for him. We smile gently behind his back at his lack of understanding, his naivete, his childlike belief in the impossible. Let him believe he caught a star. 

But he doesn’t care. His wish came true and his quest was a success. He has a star of his very own. He smiles back. He knows what many of us have forgotten – if we don’t set lofty goals because they seem impossible, if we don’t try a different strategy because we failed, if we don’t look for the answers to our prayers in ways other than we expected or demanded, we will always miss the magic that happens everyday all around us.  

I think that is a perfect example of Kenn Adam’s favorite new addition of  “and the moral of the story is….”

And it’s a great moral.