Kate Gordon on The Ballad of Melodie Rose and the importance of being seen

Kate Gordon grew up in a very booky house, in a small town by the sea in Tasmania. After studying performing arts and realising she was a terrible actor, Kate decided to become a librarian. She never stopped writing and, in 2009, she applied for and won a Varuna fellowship, which led to all sorts of lovely writer things happening. Kate’s first book, Three Things About Daisy Blue, was published by Allen and Unwin in 2010. Her most recent publications are the young adult novel Girl Running, Boy Falling and the younger reader Juno Jones: Word Ninja. Her latest middle grade novel for kids is called The Ballad of Melodie Rose.

Today, Kate Gordon is on the blog to tell us all about the power and importance of being seen for you you really are. Read on!

Kate Gordon

I once read a quote that was something like, Junior fiction is about discovering the world. Middle Grade fiction is about discovering your place in the world and your community. YA fiction is about discovering yourself.

I’m not sure if that’s exactly how it goes but, for me, that’s why I have fallen in love with middle grade fiction and why I want to write it forever. Finding our place in the world seems to me to be our most important journey. Finding out where we fit in school, in play, in friendships and in the wider community is at the essence of what makes us human.

And all of that, really, is about being seen.

Once we know that we have toes, and that is what they’re called; that the big black and white things are cows and the orange pointy things are carrots, we start to want to share what we have learned and who we are.

I am Kate and I have toes – so do you!

I am Kate and I like cows. You like koalas! We both like crows!

See who I am and I will see who you are!

I love going to visit my daughter’s class, for literacy lessons. Because I am something new and sparkly in the classroom, each time I visit, the children are all eager to speak to me. They want to show me themselves and how they are special.

Some kids run to me with stories and facts.

Others hang back, shy, protective of themselves and their souls.

Will she like me, if I show myself?

I was like these children. When I was around other children, I hung back, head down, too shy to step forward. I was desperate to show myself, to share my story, the way these other kids were sharing theirs.

There was so much to know about me.

I loved The Beatles and lime spiders and books about witches and I hated wearing skirts and I could spend all day searching for the perfect, shiny stone on the beach.

I wanted to tell people all about me. I wanted to hear about them, too. I wanted to form that sort of connection that comes from knowing a person and them knowing you. I wanted to make my imprint on the world, to make some difference to it, somehow.

But I was too scared. I wasn’t brave enough to make myself seen.

In The Ballad of Melodie Rose, I explore the yearning to be seen and loved that all children (and adults) feel. Melodie, like me as a child, wants more than anything to be visible to those around her – her mother, in particular, who has abandoned her after a tragedy in their lives. She wants to make a difference – to save the school she has come to love. In equal measure, she wants to hide away from those who might judge and dislike her. This push and pull is at the centre of the novel and in so many of us too.

I want to be seen, but if I am seen, I may be hated or ridiculed.

I wanted to explore the bravery that comes when we allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable with one another and share our truths, our wants and needs.

I also wanted to talk about love and how hard it is to love again, when we’ve been hurt; how hard it is to be open.

Every character in this book has been hurt by those they love. Hollowbeak has lost his best friend, Wonder. Melodie has lost her mother. Miss Gallow has lost her daughter. The ghost girls have lost everyone they loved, before they died. Even the Woman in White is suffering. Every one of them has developed coping mechanisms, to deal with a world that seems cruel. Through the course of the book, we see them slowly, tentatively, bravely, letting each other in and, through this, beginning to heal.

And to be seen.

Every one of them feels small and insignificant, in different ways. Because they are a ghost, because they are old, because they are a bird, because they have failed at living the life they wanted to live. I wanted to show in this book that it is never too late to be the person you want to be, and that it is a choice. You are never too small to make a difference, and if you can’t do it alone, you need to find people who will lift you up, until you are as big as you need to be.

One of my favourite things, as a parent, is watching my nine-year-old daughter blossoming into a brave and beautiful human, who is wholly her own self. She has gone through periods of intense shyness, like I lived through. She is also a deep and often self-critical thinker, like I was. But she now goes to a beautiful little school, where she has found her tribe and is empowered to be everything she wants to be. She has gone from a girl afraid to sing in a choir of other kids to a girl who volunteers to do stand-up comedy at school camp, and who puts her hand up to be part of her school’s version of student council – and wins a spot! My kid is not a natural extrovert but her friends and schoolmates have empowered her to feel worthy of being seen.

Sometimes, it is all about finding your people – other people like you – who love you just as you are.

For me, the place I found myself was in words. I’m still too shy to talk to people, most of the time, but in words, I’m seen. I have found my voice. Maybe that’s why I want to keep writing Middle Grade, forever. I’m using my voice to help children learn how to find theirs. It’s my way of making a difference in the world.

I hope you love reading The Ballad of Melodie Rose. I hope you love meeting the beautiful, big-hearted and deeply, wonderfully flawed characters in the novel. I hope it empowers you to find your own voice and be seen.

—The Ballad of Melodie Rose by Kate Gordon (University of Queensland Press) is out now.

Ballad Ballad

The Ballad of Melodie Rose

by Kate Gordon

A heartfelt story of one girl’s determination to save her beloved home and the lyrical companion tale to The Heartsong of Wonder Quinn.

When Melodie Rose is abandoned on the doorstep of Direleafe Hall, she realises she must be a ghost. Strangely, she is not sad. With the three other ghostly girls who haunt the school and a gloomy crow on her shoulder, Melodie has never felt more at peace. Finally, she has a place to call home. So when the Lady in White arrives with plans to flatten the beloved school, Melodie Rose must act fast...

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