Ossiri and the Bala Mengro (Child’s Play Library)
This tale of ‘Tattin Folki’ – or rag and bone people – vividly conjures a ‘Traveller’ way of life inside Britain that few ‘settled people’ know, and it comes from a collaboration between a Romani storyteller and a picture-book writer to capture oral stories before they are lost.
Ossini is a sparky Traveller girl, who longs to make music, so she makes an instrument from wood and recycled bits. When she goes off into the hills to practise, she wakes a sleeping ogre – the ‘Bala Mengro’ – which is “huge and hairy as a Shire horse”. What follows from this is both wry and heart-warming. The story unfolds using language that is lyrical yet spare, in the tradition of other picture books. But the authors happily include Romani words and phrases, which works quite wonderfully.
The illustrations, which remind me slightly of Lowry paintings, cleverly evoke the bold colours and style of Romani culture. Like the text, they include details of Traveller lifestyles that children will surely love to examine. For instance, one spread shows all the tiny pieces that Ossiri assembles to make her ‘Tattin Django’. Another gives us a wide-angle view into a Traveller camp at night.
This is a picture book where everything has been thought about, from the patterned end papers to the glossary that explains the sprinkling of unfamiliar words. It is beautiful to look at, and wonderful to read aloud. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who is old enough to meet an ogre.
