Maz Evans (text) and Chris Jevons (illustrator), The Exploding Life of Scarlett Fife, Hachette, May 2021, 224 pp., RRP $14.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781444957679
Scarlett Fife has Big Feelings about a lot of things in her life, like not getting to take Mr Nibbles the classroom hamster home, or William U who always gets everything his way because his mum is the classroom assistant, or her mum always being stressedy and forgetting important things like playdates and school excursions. And when Scarlett Fife gets Big Feelings, she gets a fizzy feeling and everything builds up and up until things around her just… explode!
If Scarlett loses her temper one more time, though, she’s going to miss out on the trip her mum promised her to Mega Awesome Sicky Fun World. Scarlett has to work out how to manage her Big Feelings before anyone finds out that she’s the one who made that big pile of elephant poo explode.
This book is a very clever and funny look at how to manage feelings and temper for children. Through Scarlett, it explores not just her feelings of anger, sadness, and uncertainty but some of the causes of those feelings. Scarlett feels angry about a lot of things, from injustice in the classroom to not getting the UniMingo party she desperately wanted, or her mother not being there for her special performance in the Christmas play.
From big things to little things, Scarlett finds that many things trigger Big Feelings, and I’m sure a lot of kids will be able to identify. The metaphor of Scarlett’s exploding feelings and the way that she makes things literally explode around her may be an obvious one, but it is no less effective for that and is frequently hilariously funny.
What The Exploding Life of Scarlett Fife does particularly well, though, is it explores a wide variety of coping mechanisms. Scarlett gets advice and help from her best friend in how to see things from another perspective, and she talks to a number of adults, including one of her aunts who is a professional therapist. They each help Scarlett to understand her anger a little better. Scarlett learns a number of different techniques and puts them into action when she feels her Big Feelings bubbling up. It is made clear, through the adults, that getting rid of anger completely isn’t realistic, or even desirable. What Scarlett is learning is when and how to get angry, and a number of things that she can do when she starts feeling overwhelmed by her emotions.
Evans also lightly touches on a very diverse range of different family relationships within Scarlett’s world. Scarlett’s stepfather, Jakub, is dealing with losing his job and taking his former boss to court for racial discrimination, and this is having a financial and emotional impact. Scarlett herself moves between two households. Her aunts Amara and Rosa are getting married, and Scarlett has some Big Feelings about her father making the new girl’s mum his girlfriend. All of this is seen through Scarlett’s viewpoint in a way that feels very true to a child’s perspective.
Adult readers are going to enjoy a lot of the little references that might go over the head of a child reader, like all the syndromes that William U’s mum has read about on MyChildCentre.Universe, and the snide asides that some of the other adults make about them. Scarlett’s observations on everything make for a very enjoyable and funny reading.
The Exploding Life of Scarlett Fife is going to be an excellent book to use as a starting point for discussions with young readers about emotions and how to handle them. It’s also a book that’s going to raise a laugh from readers aged about 7 to 11 years, and a good one to recommend to kids who loved the magical humour and emotions manifesting in Roald Dahl’s Matilda.
Reviewed by Emily Clarke
