The Other Shadow by Tania Ingram

Title: The Other Shadow

Author: Tania Ingram

Genre: Contemporary

Publisher: Scholastic Australia

Published: 1^st July 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 240

Price: $15.99

Synopsis: Life has not been easy for Thomas since his dad died. His mother is acting strangely, he needs to care for his younger sister and things at school aren’t great. And then there’s the Other Shadow. The shadow that doesn’t belong to anyone. The shadow that wants to be Thomas’ friend. But who can you really trust when your world is falling apart?

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Eleven-year-old Thomas has been through a lot in the last couple of years – his father died from cancer, and ever since, his mother has been acting unlike herself – to Thomas, she is acting strangely, going out at all hours, not getting out of bed and not doing anything around the house or the shopping – and leaving Thomas and Tilly hungry. And then there’s the Other Shadow that has been showing up ever since his father died, and the shadow wants to be Thomas’s friend.

But Thomas doesn’t know who to trust. He can’t trust his friends at school – they wouldn’t understand. He can’t trust the teachers because…he doesn’t know what to say or how to explain it to people. And then there are the foster families that take them in, ranging from uncaring to the delightful Henares – Ari, Bec, and two other foster children, Em and Ollie, who are the first people Thomas feels safe with – the safest he’s felt in a long time. And Thomas is scared – scared that things will go wrong again, scared that when his mum says she’s better, she’s really not, and scared of what could happen to him and Tilly.  But he is also scared that what is happening to his mum, is going to happen to him.

In this poignant and touching middle grade to early young adult novel by Tania Ingram, readers gain insight into mental health in families, and how a parent’s struggles with mental health can affect their children, as well as the role of the foster care system and the help, or in some cases, not so much help, it can give, as Thomas and Tilly find out as they go between home and care throughout the novel. Readers gain a glimpse into what life is like for children in the foster system, and what happens when life doesn’t work out how we hoped or expected. I felt for Thomas and Tilly – I wanted them to be happy and safe, and there was always the glimmer of hope that their mother would get better – that tiny little bit of me that wanted things to work out so their family would be reunited.

Throughout the novel, Thomas has an invisible friend, I guess you could call it, that he refers to as the Other Shadow who turns up at various stages throughout the book. The Other Shadow is a protector of sorts and makes Thomas feel safe at times, but at other times, he wants it to go away so he can settle and be calm again, be able to move on with his life. He grapples with this as he grapples with taking care of Tilly and feeling responsible for his mother. It is almost a manifestation of his worries at times, the thing that he is unsure of, and unsure of how to deal with, but there is also a sense of hope as Thomas starts to feel like he can talk to people about it – and the first person he tells wasn’t the person I expected – and this is what made this connection so beautiful. I adored Ari and Bec as well – they made things feel safe, and I knew that they were the people Thomas needed to help him through his tough times.

Yet, perhaps what made this book work so well was the way it grappled with the realities of mental health and the different ways people react to treatment, the different degrees of help people need, and the variety of ways that it affects people. It shows the spectrum of how bipolar disorder manifests itself differently in different people, examining how the condition impacts the person and the people around them – in this instance, children who are very young and still need their mother. It highlights that everyone is affected through the eyes of a child, who feels he has to be brave and take care of everyone, and be strong. Tania Ingram doesn’t shy away from the realities of what Thomas and Tilly are going through, their fears, their hunger, and the uncertainties that they face, whilst also writing it for middle grade to young adult readers, allowing them to understand what this experience is like.

It is an experience that isn’t often explored in literature – mental health and its impacts are things that we don’t often talk about, but it is something that we need to be speaking about and reading about. Seeing it written about in The Other Shadow shows that it is an important topic we need to be open about. Books like The Other Shadow are a good start, and can open up conversations with children and parents and other people in the lives of those going through mental health struggles, or to help people understand what mental health issues can be like for those who are dealing with them.