by Various
There was a rush of soft darkness and my butterfly cupcake was gone.
Sammy, the class dog, had eaten it right out of my hand.
“Well, what did you think would happen, holding a cupcake in front of a dog like that?” cried Sister Rosalia.
Our school library was a small dark room. There was a wall of books and a table. One day, I pulled out a book called The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl.
I sat at the table to read it.
It’s the story of a girl who has a secret. Whenever she feels angry, her finger starts to tingle. A flash of light jumps out of her, and lands on the person who made her angry, and things begin to happen …
When the family next door go out hunting, ignoring the girl’s pleas to stop, her Magic Finger tingles – and turns them into a family of ducks.
I loved the book. It was funny and took unexpected turns.
But the thing that made the world close to a point for me, while I was reading it, was this: the girl kept saying, “I saw red”.
I had never heard the expression before. I figured out, from the context, that it had something to do with anger, but it seemed to me that it also meant more than that. It was such a strange, puzzling, evocative phrase, so empty and yet so full at the same time.
The year that I was six, I had a terrible secret.
When Angela swiped the invitation from my hand, when I was trapped in the school bench, when Christine slapped me, when the dog ate my butterfly cake – I felt rage.
My rage was very specific: I wanted to become a giant, and use my giant foot to smash things.
But I was a good girl. A very, very good girl. My goodness took the form of being quiet. When I wasn’t stuck in a bench, Sister Rosalia loved me! Because I was so nice and quiet! She was always giving me holy cards for sitting quietly with my arms folded. I was so quiet I got left behind in classrooms. I was so quiet people thought I was just moving my lips when I spoke.
A teacher asked me a question in the playground once. When I answered, she leaned in close. “You’re a little mouse,” she said. “Listen to you. Little mouse.”
I stared at her. I imagined how she would look flat as a pancake underneath my giant boot.
I told nobody about my fury. It scared me. It seemed important to keep it secret.
But when I read The Magic Finger, there it was. Here was a girl, around my own age, feeling immense, powerless rage. And the enormity of her anger was captured in a single, curious handful of words: I saw red.
I borrowed The Magic Finger from the library every single week for the rest of the year.
Yesterday, I googled the phrase “seeing red”. The first few results said it was to do with waving red flags at bulls (although bulls are actually agitated by the movement of the flag, not its colour, since they can’t see red). Other sites speculated that the phrase refers to the bloodshot eyes, or even the “red aura”, of angry people.
Then I found a site that asked whether people might literally see red. I scrolled down, through comment after comment, from people who said that they do. These people described feeling infuriated – a boy had been attacked by strangers; a woman had discovered that her dead son’s possessions had been stolen – and then finding, briefly, that their entire world had turned red. As if they were seeing through cellophane or amber, they said, or from inside a red haze. Many also described a rushing sound in their ears, shaking hands, a sense of dissociation – and then a kind of extraordinary, superhuman strength. Some blacked out after seeing red, and woke to find people staring at them in amazement, because they’d just floored three huge men, or destroyed a car. Many said that, while the world was tinted with red, they’d never felt so strong: that time slowed down, they were invincible. And then, they said, the anger fell away, and they were left exhausted, themselves again.
I re-read The Magic Finger today. For a story about rage, it’s surprisingly gentle. It’s mainly about the family next door spending the night as ducks. They fly, build a nest, get hungry and look for food. (The kids are horrified at the idea of eating worms. Their mother offers to mince the worms up into “worm burgers” or “slug burgers”. They decide to eat apples instead.) It rains in the night and the family are cold, wet and miserable; the next day they find themselves the targets of hunters.
It’s not a story of revenge or punishment. It’s not violent or vindictive. It’s just a family of hunters finding out exactly how it is to be a duck: to live like ducks, and to be shot at.
In the end they turn back into people. They vow never to hunt again. They smash their guns to pieces, they scatter barley for ducks, and they change their name from the Greggs to the Eggs, in honour of all birds.
The girl is relieved that the family is okay: she never knows what her magic finger will do when she is angry and, as mad as she was about their hunting, she didn’t want them to get hurt. But this time, what her magic has done is to change her neighbours by helping them see the truth.
The Magic Finger snared me by knowing my secret about anger and by capturing the secret in a single, mysterious phrase. But maybe it kept me mesmerised so long because it turned the secret into something good. The girl in the book did not lose control and disappear into a rampage. Instead she discovered a power in herself, to change things by making people see.
Years after I had read The Magic Finger, I was doing an honours degree in English literature. I couldn’t decide whether to do my thesis on Virginia Woolf or F Scott Fitzgerald. I woke in the night and decided that it should be on Roald Dahl. My thesis supervisor thought I’d lost my mind. “I’ll do a post-structural analysis of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!” I told him. “I’ll write about Dahl from the perspective of Foucault!”
Neither of us knew what I was talking about.
“This is a mistake,” he said, but he suggested I write the first chapter of a Roald Dahl thesis and see how it went.
A few weeks later, I went to see him in his office. He was holding the first chapter.
He looked at me curiously. “You seem so nervous and uncertain in person,” he said, “but this writing’s like a force of nature. You’ve persuaded me. Keep going.”
The point is this: you can be angry or unhappy, lonely or shy, but it’s always better to make your voice heard, so that people see your truth, than to turn into a giant and crush them.
(I never went to Angela’s birthday party, but she and I ended up friends. So I got to see the flat above the newsagency after all. Every time I visited, her dad used to give us free lollies from behind the counter. That was better than a party.)
About the Authors
RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH is an award-winning author of young adult books and a human rights and anti-racism advocate. She is a regular guest at schools and international writers’ festivals. Randa worked as a litigation lawyer for almost ten years but is now undertaking a PhD exploring everyday multiculturalism and Islamophobia. She lives in Sydney with her husband and their three children.
BERNARD BECKETT lives in Porirua, New Zealand. He is a high school drama teacher and the father of three young boys. He has written a number of novels and plays. His most recent novel, Lullaby, was published in 2015.
CATHY CASSIDY is the author of the Chocolate Box Girls series and many other books. She has worked as a teen mag journalist, an illustrator, agony aunt and art teacher but now writes full time. She lives with her husband, kids and a houseful of unruly rescue animals in England.
FELICITY CASTAGNA’s latest book, The Incredible Here and Now, received the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction in 2014. Her work has been widely published in Australian literary magazines and newspapers and produced for radio. She teaches writing at arts centres, schools and universities. She recently completed a PhD with the Writing and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney.
QUEENIE CHAN was born in 1980 in Hong Kong, and migrated to Australia when she was six years old. In 2004, she began drawing a three-volume mystery-ho
rror series called The Dreaming for LA-based manga publisher TOKYOPOP. She has since collaborated on several graphic novels with author Dean Koontz for his Odd Thomas series, and with Kylie Chan and her White Tiger fantasy series. She is currently working on book three of Fabled Kingdom, a fairytale-inspired fantasy story. It will be out in December 2016. Apart from her professional work, she also draws a number of short stories on her personal site: www.queeniechan.com
KATE CONSTABLE is a Melbourne writer who grew up in Papua New Guinea. She has written ten novels for children and young adults, including the award-winning Crow Country, the Chanters of Tremaris series, Cicada Summer and New Guinea Moon. She still loves stories about time.
RACHAEL CRAW began her working life as an English Teacher after completing a degree in Classical Studies and Drama at the University of Canterbury. She dabbled in acting, directing and writing for amateur theatre productions and small independent film ventures. Her passion for dialogue and characterisation finally led to long-form writing with the Spark series. Rachael’s enthusiasm for classical heroes, teen angst and popular culture informs much of her creative process. She enjoys small-town life at the top of the South Island of New Zealand where she lives with her husband and three daughters. Visit her online at www.rachaelcraw.com
ALISON CROGGON is an award-winning poet whose work has been published extensively in anthologies and magazines internationally. So far she has written seven internationally released YA fantasies: the five-part series the Books of Pellinor, Black Spring (shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award) and The River and the Book. She has written widely for theatre, and her plays and opera libretti have been produced all around Australia. Alison is also an editor and critic. She lives in Melbourne with her husband Daniel Keene, the playwright.
CATH CROWLEY is an award-winning young adult author published in Australia and internationally. Her books include the Gracie Faltrain trilogy, Chasing Charlie Duskin, Graffiti Moon and Words in Deep Blue. Cath writes and teaches in Melbourne.
TED DAWE has written four novels: Thunder Road (2003), K Road (2005), And Did Those Feet (2006) and Into the River (2012). He has also written a collection of short stories Captain Sailorbird and Other Stories (2007). He has received a number of awards including Young Adult Book Award (twice), Best First book, and the Margaret Mahy Award for Book of the Year (2013) in the New Zealand Post Book Awards. In 2014 he was named an Honorary Literary Fellow by the New Zealand Society of Authors. He lives in Auckland with his wife and son.
URSULA DUBOSARSKY wanted to be a writer from the age of six, and is now the author of over forty books for children and young adults, which have won several national prizes, including the New South Wales, Victorian, South Australian and Queensland Premiers’ Literary Awards. She lives in Sydney with her family.
SIMON FRENCH grew up in Sydney’s west, and had his first children’s novel published while he was still at high school. He has written novels and picture books, published in Australia and overseas. His work is praised by critics and has won several awards, including the 1987 Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year Award for All We Know. Change the Locks was an Honour Book in 1992. His novel Where in the World won the 2003 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for Children’s Literature, and was shortlisted for the 2003 CBCA Book of the Year for Younger Readers, longlisted for the 2003 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and nominated to the IBBY Honour List in 2004. Other Brother is his most recent novel for children. Simon is a primary school teacher in the Hawkesbury region of New South Wales.
MANDY HAGER is a multi-award-winning New Zealand author for young adults. Her most recent book Singing Home the Whale won the Young Adult Book Award and the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year in the 2015 New Zealand Book Awards and was named a 2016 IBBY Honour Book. When she is not working on her own projects she teaches novel writing and has just become a doting granny. www.mandyhager.com
SIMMONE HOWELL spent her teen years writing love odes to eighties pop stars and English essays for her friends. She is the author of novels Notes from the Teenage Underground, Everything Beautiful and Girl Defective. Notes from the Teenage Underground was awarded the 2007 Victorian Premier’s Prize for YA fiction and the inaugural Inky Teenage Choice Award. Everything Beautiful was a finalist in the Melbourne Prize for Best Writing. Girl Defective was shortlisted for the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Award. Simmone lives in Melbourne where she writes, drinks coffee and dreams of faraway places. www.simmonehowell.com @postteen
CATHERINE JOHNSON is a born and bred Londoner who now lives on the South Coast of England and looks at the sea a lot. She studied film at St Martin’s School of Art. Her last novel The Curious Tale of The Lady Caraboo has been nominated for the Carnegie Medal. She also writes for radio, film and TV.
WILL KOSTAKIS writes for young adults and younger readers. His The First Third was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Award, and won the Inside A Dog Gold Inky. His latest release is The Sidekicks. He still hasn’t finished Hatchet.
AMBELIN KWAYMULLINA is an Aboriginal author, illustrator and law academic who comes from the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. She is the author/illustrator of a number of award-winning picture books as well as a dystopian series for young adults, The Tribe series.
BENJAMIN LAW is a Sydney-based journalist, columnist and screenwriter, and has completed a PhD in television writing and cultural studies. He is the author of The Family Law (2010) and Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East (2012), and co-wrote Shit Asian Mothers Say (2014) with his sister Michelle and illustrator Oslo Davis. Both his books have been nominated for Australian Book Industry Awards, and The Family Law has been adapted into a major TV series for SBS. Benjamin has also written for over fifty publications, businesses and agencies in Australia and worldwide. www.benjamin-law.com @mrbenjaminlaw
JULIA LAWRINSON grew up in the outer suburbs of Perth, and spent her childhood re-reading the limited number of books in her house, including Reader’s Digest condensed novels, medical encyclopedias and Little House on the Prairie. These days she writes novels for children and young adults, and revisits the Little House books from time to time, just to make sure they’re still as good as they were.
SUE LAWSON’s love for books and stories began when she was a child in country Victoria. On her family farm, she spent her time reading, writing, listening to her father and grandfather’s stories and avoiding working with the cattle. Her young adult novels include Pan’s Whisper and You Don’t Even Know. Sue’s latest book is Freedom Ride and her website is www.suelawson.com.au
(It’s ironic that she only discovered after leaving the town where she’d lived for fourteen years, that Lee Harding had been born there.)
BRIGID LOWRY is the award-winning author of eight young adult titles, including Guitar Highway Rose and Juicy Writing: Inspiration and Techniques for Young Writers. Brigid also writes poetry, essays and performance pieces, and has an MA in Creative Writing. She believes in nectarines, coloured pencils and op shops, and in encouraging others to live with authenticity and joy. Her first adult book is Still Life with Teapot: On Zen, Memoir and Creativity, Fremantle Press, 2016.
EMILY MAGUIRE is the author of five novels and two non-fiction books, and a teacher and mentor to emerging writers. She has twice been named as a Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelist of the Year. Her latest book is the novel An Isolated Incident. www.emilymaguire.com.au
CATHERINE MAYO has always been a compulsive reader and dreamer. She studied violin, history, philosophy and geology before becoming a musician, violin-maker and restorer. Thirteen years ago she started writing and has won several prizes in short story competitions. Her first book, Murder at Mykenai, and its sequel, The Bow, were published by Walker Books.
SUE McPHERSON grew up with her adoptive family on a property near Batlow, in southern New South Wales. Her first book Grace Beside Me was published in 2012. From her home in Eumundi, Sue continues t
o create and write stories either for publication or screen.
JACLYN MORIARTY is the author of several novels for young adults (and one for adults), including the internationally best-selling Feeling Sorry for Celia and Finding Cassie Crazy, and, most recently, the Colours of Madeleine trilogy. Her books have won several prizes including the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award, the Queensland Literary Award and the Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Fantasy. A former media lawyer, Jaclyn grew up in Sydney, lived in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, and now lives in Sydney again.
For the last decade MAL PEET quietly gathered literary awards in the UK, the USA and Europe. Although best known as a writer of fiction for young adults his books have a wide and growing adult readership. Born in Norfolk, England, in 1947, Mal Peet died in 2015.
JUDITH RIDGE learned to read before she started school and hasn’t stopped since. In between books, she has worked as a teacher, editor, critic and writer, and on a range of projects and festivals designed to encourage young people to be readers and writers. She is internationally known for her expertise in children’s and young adult literature and has spoken at conferences and festivals all around the world. Judith is currently writing her PhD on Australian children’s and young adult fantasy fiction. She lives in a dusty old house in South Windsor, New South Wales, with two mad cats and too many books.
JAMES ROY has written over thirty books for children and young adults, some of which have badges on the front covers. He visits more than fifty schools locally and abroad each year, and lives in the beautiful Blue Mountains near Sydney, where he enjoys coaxing vaguely musical sounds out of a variety of instruments.
