Dr Boogaloo and The Girl Who Lost Her Laughter - Review

Dr Boogaloo and The Girl Who Lost Her Laughter

(Penguin Random House Australia, 2017)

Written by Lisa Nicol, illustrated by Daniel Gray-Barnett

Tags: Children’s novel, Reading, Music

I’ve been wanting to write this review for a long time, especially since I unofficially declared this book my favourite children’s novel of 2017. I even met the author, Lisa Nicol, at this year’s Kids&YA Festival at Writing NSW and was able to tell her that in person. So, here it is.

The Plot

Dr Boogaloo is a specialist in curing ‘unusual complaints’. In fact, it is said that he treats ‘every kind of childhood disorder you can think of, from Can Only Sleep If Wearing A Pair Of Goggles And A Snorkel Syndrome to uncontrollable swearing every time the afflicted opens his or her mouth.

In other words, Dr Boogaloo steps in, where ordinary treatment fails.

He treats illness not with pills and portions. No, no, no! He has one cure only – music! The key, he knows, lies in the dosage and kind of music, of course.

“Musical medicine is an exact art. And it’s extraordinarily complicated.”

The way Dr. Boogaloo explains it is this – everyone has their own tune but

“Sometimes, for one reason or other, we get all out of tune. We lose the beat, you might say.”

A girl named Blue, yes after the colour (I will come to that in a moment), suffers from an awful illness for quite some time: 712 days, to be exact. Only one person might have a clue as to how to cure this debilitating and isolating, stigmatising affliction of No-Laughing Syndrome that causes Blue to be misunderstood and lonely.

That person is Dr Boogaloo.

But Blue’s loss of laughter is a challenge unlike any other he’s faced before. In three hundred years, not one patient left Boogaloo’s Family Clinic of Musical Cures uncured, but when he can’t seem to find a cure for Blue he is about to give it all up.

Theme(s)

Blue is different because she cannot laugh. Blue is not a name, but a state of mind. Not that we don’t understand why – her mother treats her like a fashion accessory – she changes her daughter’s name regularly, depending on the colour theme of her designer home; her ever absent, animal shooting father make her feel different:

"Blue found many things about her parents difficult to understand […] Blue felt as though she was born into the wrong family."

Dr Boogaloo and The Girl Who Lost Her Laughter is a book about the power of music.

It shows the ability of music to transform thoughts and feeling; its ability to nurture the act of listening – to others and to one self.  The story illuminates the role music plays in everyone’s life  and wellbeing.

“Not everyone hears the right music – or knows how to listen. And they suffer terribly… if you don’t let your heart fly, your tune gets right out of whack. It’s a bit like spending your whole life indoors – it’s just not good for your health.”

The book introduces the reader to a global collection of musical instruments, their sounds and the way they are plaid. Nurturing creativity/music from early childhood can bring not only joy, but basic life skills that can be a tool to feeling and expressing connectedness with one self and others.

Pictures

Musical notes, people, animals and other objects depicted throughout the book, as well as on the cover, seem in a state of flux: they move in different beats and rhythms, or float on melodies across the page.

Illustrator Daniel Gray-Barnett captures Blue’s isolation particularly well in the image of the cover where some invisible force pushes her outside world – people, music, animals – centrifugally to the margins of the paper.

Whatever sound or vibration causes this – it has no rhythm, melody, pitch, or timbre. Blue is visibly out of tune.

The Words

Apart from the fact that Dr Boogaloo’s wife Bessie uses an iBike that transports them both to higher grounds while paddling to the clinic everyday, the book offers a number of beautiful sounding words.

(There are so many, I can’t choose, so I leave this for the reader to explore!)

Back to the iBike ride:

"Off they went. Bessie’s skirt billowed out like butterfly wings. Blue closed her eyes and felt the iBike lift up into the sky."

It also makes Blue feel the music in her body:

"You can feel your heart flutter as soon as the music hits you, right? That’s the wings being attached. Snap, snap! Then if you pay attention, you can feel your heart nudging your ribs, dipping into your stomach and flying out through your skin. That’s that tingling feeling."

And

"Sometimes our strings get tangled up. That’s called falling in love. That’s why you can’t fall in love without music."

Sometimes, the sentences have a song-like feel to them:

"The research was in.

The facts were firm.

The truth was crystal clear!"

But also:

"Any little hee hees in that time?" Asked the Doctor."No,""ho hos?""None.""What about tee hees?""No," said Blue, barely a whisper."haw haws, yuk yuks?"

Dr Boogaloo and The Girl Who Lost Her Laughter is funny, sad and witty and makes you laugh every other page.  It makes you want to learn a fabulous instrument - who wouldn't want to try out the djembes or the swan-bone flute? It’s a great book for middle-grade readers or for reading together out aloud. A good book when you feel the need for a good tune or a good laugh. :-)