Just Joshua
Page 13
‘Oh!’ Joshua’s face split right across in a huge and happy smile. He turned and buried himself in Sister Martha’s arms.
‘Joshua.’
Sister Martha turned him back to face Reverend Mother.
‘Don’t you think you should say something to Mr and Mrs Nettar?’ the older nun prompted.
He left the safety of Sister Martha and Robert and went and stood nervously in front of the couple.
The woman’s eyes were wet. She reached out, and he let her pull him to her and hug him. The bundle with the knife dug into her side and she looked down in surprise.
His nervousness left him. He drew back and, slowly, he unwrapped the paper once more. He took the piece of wood and held it out to her. ‘I can carve,’ he said to her and the man. ‘See?’ He pointed to the emerging head. He pressed it into her hand. ‘You can have it, if you like.’
The room was very silent. ‘You can take it with you,’ he said, in case she hadn’t understood. He looked round.
Robert was the first to speak. ‘Mountain man,’ he teased, but gently, and there was a grin on his face.
Joshua grinned back.
‘Our mountain man,’ Sister Martha corrected.
Joshua’s chin lifted. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m just Joshua.’
A Note from the Author
Dear Reader,
After his father’s death, Joshua thinks that he doesn’t belong anywhere. It’s a feeling many of us have, perhaps if we’re foreign, perhaps just if we’re different. It’s certainly something I experienced when I was Joshua’s age – which is maybe one of the reasons for writing this book.
When I was eleven I was sent away from the tropics where I lived, to go to boarding school in Wales. School was fine, but for the first two years I didn’t see my parents. I stayed with relations in the holidays, but it was confusing; they didn’t do things the way we did at home, and I didn’t know where I belonged – a bit like Joshua when he discovers his background.
After being in a hot, tropical country where all the colours were bright and the smells were strong and the sea just there for the swimming, coming to Europe was like being dumped in an icy bath in a grey room. It took me some time to get used to it, but later I grew to love it. And if it was hard for me, who had experience of living in Britain before, imagine how difficult it might have been for Joshua who had never travelled anywhere, who wouldn’t have known what to expect.
As Joshua found out, people can be peculiar about other people who aren’t the same. Joshua thought being adopted would solve his problems. In the end, though, he decided to stay where he was, to acknowledge what he was, even if it was a bit different.
It’s good to be a little different from each other. Wouldn’t the world be dull if we were all the same?
Best wishes,
About the Author
Jan Michael
JAN MICHAEL was born in her grandparents’ house on the Yorkshire moors. At age six she moved with her parents to the Seychelles, where, by her own admission, she ran wild. When she was eleven she was sent to boarding school in Wales, returning once a year to see her parents, who moved from the Seychelles to Lesotho in southern Africa, and then to Pakistan.
She studied history at Bristol University and worked in London as an editor before moving to Holland. Her office in Amsterdam is an old tobacconist’s shop dating from the 1880s.
Jan has written five novels and five children’s books, some of which have been translated into Dutch, Danish, Italian and German. Just Joshua won the Vlag en Wimpel Award in the Netherlands. Her previous book with The O’Brien Press was The Rock Boy.
Copyright
This eBook edition first published 2012 by The O’Brien Press Ltd,
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First published 2003
eBook ISBN: 978–1–84717–483–3
Copyright for text © Jan Michael
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Michael, Jan
Just Joshua
1.Group identity - Juvenile fiction
2.Children’s stories
I.Title
823.9’14[J]
The O’Brien Press receives assistance from
Editing, typesetting, layout and design: The O’Brien Press Ltd
Author photograph, page 2: David Winner