How do you marry mental illness with an entertaining children’s book?
Cindy Baldwin has done just that in her debut novel: Where the Watermelons Grow.
Summary:
Twelve-year-old Della Kelly of Marysville, North Carolina, tries to come to terms with her mother’s mental illness while her father struggles to save the farm from a record-breaking drought.
Daunting subject matter:
It’s true. Taking on mental illness as a subject (schizophrenia, no less!) is not for the faint of heart. But Cindy Baldwin does it and leaves the reader with an exquisite experience of sweetness as her protagonist (Della) comes of age.
Della has a best friend—Arden—someone she loves and can rely on 100%. When Della and Arden are together, ladybugs appear. This unique and lovely device brings vivid life to the magic of real friendship.
The hard part:
Reading about Della’s mother falling deeper and deeper into her illness is hard. Witnessing the typical way Della and her father try to keep it a secret is hard. But hardest of all for me, was understanding with every fiber of my being how Della made herself responsible for her mother’s illness.
We all have personal character lessons and struggles. I have a strong responsibility streak. The downside of it, both as a child and as an adult, has been using that responsibility as a way to try to make sense of painful events. So my heart ached right along with Della as she kept telling herself she had to figure out how to cure her mother, because it was her fault her mother was so sick.
The beautiful part:
The biggest gift this book delivers is at the end, in Della’s realization that we are loved and nurtured not by one person, but by many people. Being open and able to receive love where it comes is a huge lesson and an enormous gift. Thank you, Ms. Baldwin, for delivering it so sweetly!
Where the Watermelons Grow, by Cindy Baldwin, will stretch you with its content and grace you with its emotional gifts.
Happy Reading!
P.S. I’ve had this book beside my bed for quite a while now, and every time I see the cover and title, I start singing this little ditty my mother taught me: “Down by the sea, where the watermelons grow…” If you know it, I dare you not to think of it when you get this book!