Little Bones by Sandy Bigna

Title: Little Bones

Author: Sandy Bigna

Genre: Verse novel

Publisher: UQP

Published: 4^th March 2025

Format: Paperback

Pages: 288

Price: $16.99

Synopsis: Did you know
that if you wish aloud for something
in the stealthy shadows of your bedroom,
if you whisper the words
soft as the brush of a moth’s wing,
if you feel the words rush through your blood,
your wish might come true?

Since the accident, eleven-year-old Bones spends her time drawing animal skeletons and scavenging for dead things to add to her collection. She’s drifted away from her friends and doesn’t want to make new ones.

One night, Bones wishes on a full moon and unintentionally resurrects the skeleton of a baby bird. Bird wants to return to his natural (dead) state, so Bones agrees to reverse the curse – not that she knows how. As she and Bird work out the secrets of the magic, Bones remembers what it’s like to have a friend. How can she let Bird go when she doesn’t want to say goodbye?

With gorgeous greyscale illustrations of Bones’s collected items scattered throughout, this book is perfect for big-hearted readers of Karen Foxlee and Zana Fraillon.

~*~

For the past year, Bones has been living with her grandmother whilst her mother is away working. A year ago, an accident changed their lives, and ever since, Bones has felt alone and isolated, delving into a world of drawing animal skeletons as she navigates the end of primary school and the cusp of high school. Her grief has driven her away from friends, and made her retreat further into herself. She’s spent a year mourning, a year trying to make sense of what happened, and a year trying to make sense of why her mother won’t come back for anything.

Then Bones finds the skeleton of a baby bird, and makes a full moon wish – that unintentionally resurrects the skeleton. Bird pops back to life, but longs to return to his dead state. Around the same time, Bone meets Tenny, who moves in next door. Tenny is the first person in months that Bones feels she can trust, because Tenny doesn’t judge her for her interests. Instead, they’re interested, and want to know more about Bird, the moon magic that brought Bird to life, and they are determined to help Bones find out how to reverse the curse.

But Bones is riddled with conflict, because reversing the curse means saying goodbye to a friend, and she still has to find out what to do. It also means accepting the tragedy from a year ago cannot be reversed, that she cannot change what has happened. Bones needs to accept what happened as well, and her pain is palpable as the verses move through the story, and get into her mind and how she is feeling, and how she is coping with what happened a year ago.

Bones’s story of grief and friendship shows that we are never too young to experience loss and death. Telling it in verse also gives it a certain poignancy, bringing the depths of the characters and story to life, where a few words give lots of meaning, and where things are portrayed simply, as they are, without complication. The lack of added discussion around Tenny’s identity and everything Bones does means that the information we are given is succinct and important. It means there is a strong meaning behind what we are told that shows the vibrant acceptance of people as they are. And it allows the tensions Bones feels with Aiko to reverberate throughout the novel, and help us understand how friendships fracture and change, and what might bring people in and out of our lives when we need them.

Verse novels are a powerful way to tell a story, where you don’t need lots of detail to explore the themes and characters. The story is complete as it is, where each verse acts as a chapter or section of a chapter. The strength of this verse novel is in its various verses that explore Bones’s world and how she’s reacting to everything that has happened, that is happening and the people around her. And it’s about trying to learn, or learning to understand that everyone reacts to trauma differently, and that it is the people who help us in the hard times that can matter the most.

This touching novel of learning to grieve and accept that we cannot change what has happened is Sandy’s debut, and what a debut it is. It’s got heart and soul, tenderness and joy, whilst also acknowledging the sadness we feel throughout our lives, and the intensity of these emotions. It is a powerful novel of family, friendship and love when on the cusp of becoming a teenager, told through the eyes of a grieving child and the realisation that she is not alone.

Little Bones is a fantastic verse novel that captures a moment in time, what true friendship is, and how we can start healing after a big loss.