Matylda, Bright and Tender by Holly McGhee

Ten-year-old Susquenhanna Indiana (Sussy) Reed's special friendship with Guy Hose began in kindergarten. Like Sussy, Guy chose the Potato Heads during free play time, instead of the costume closet. It was Guy's idea to connect the Potato Heads together using the ear pieces. Each day thereafter Sussy and Guy built a never-ending potato.

By the end of first grade, Sussy and Guy "were good friends, but not together-all-the-time friends." Sussy's dad called them spaghetti and meatballs because they were always together. One day in the spring of fourth grade, Sussy and Guy invite Sussy's father to play a game of Monopoly with them. During that game, Sussy tells her father that Guy's mother believes that "Everything you need to know about life can be learned from Monopoly." But Sussy believes it doesn't fully teach people about life because "There's no love in this game."  Sussy points out that neither she nor Guy have siblings and that what they need is a pet. Guy suggests they get a leopard gecko, a pet Sussy's mom just might approve of. Guy tells them they are "good beginner reptiles" that can be kept in a tank and Sussy offers to keep the tank in her room.

Convinced, Sussy's father takes them to Total Pets where Guy chooses the largest gecko whose been in the pet store for some time. Guy suggests they name her Matylda, "with a 'y' so it's all her own." They also purchase a fifteen gallon tank and many accessories for the gecko and set it up in Sussy's bedroom. Matylda immediately takes to Guy, walking onto his hand, then up his arm and curling behind his neck. But she won't climb onto Sussy's hand.

With the help of Sussy's father who devises a way to catch live crickets in their backyard, Sussy and Guy are able to feed Matylda. Sussy doesn't like feeding Matylda live crickets and she finds watching her stalk and eat the crickets unsettling. Guy realizes this and tries to make his friend feel better about it.

Sussy and Guy visit Mike at Total Pets to ask where Matylda came from but he doesn't know. Instead he suggests they make up their own story for Matylda. So Guy creates a fantastic narrative about Matylda being a great lizard warrior whose master, the heir to a kingdom, forces her to fight other lizards.Each fight she wins sees her get another black spot on her back. The king promises Matylda if she defeats her fiftieth opponent he will set her free and grant her a wish. Matylda wins the fight, is set free and wishes to be loved. This lands her in the tank at Total Pets and into Sussy's home.

Guy and Sussy go to school together almost every day and have been doing so since third grade. Near the end of fourth grade their class has a project called Make Yourself Known, in which they have to "find a way to show the class something unique about ourselves". Their teacher, Mrs. Bueler agrees to let them bring Matylda, as long as no one touches the gecko. Sussy's father comes to class to help out with Matylda who turns out to be a big hit. Guy feeds Matylda a large cricket, but Sussy still feels upset at seeing the cricket being eaten alive.

One Saturday, Sussy and Guy decide to make a trip to Total Pets for some D3, a trace element that will help Matylda absorb calcium. Sussy suggests that they go by the reservation to see the flowers, so with their helmets on they ride their bikes. However on the corner of Witchett and Elm, an Airedale races out of a house and attacks Sussy on her bike. Guy, as usual, comes to Sussy's rescue, charging the dog. Suddenly a car coming over the hill on Witchett hits Guy who is in the middle of the road, killing him. Ten-year-old Sussy is taken to hospital and learns that her best friend, the boy she loves, it dead.Somehow Sussy must find a way to go on. Believing that caring for Matylda is the only way she can hold on to Guy, Sussy struggles with her pain until finally some poor choices catch up with her but help her to realize losing Guy will always be a part of her. 

Discussion

Matylda, Bright and Tender is a heartbreaking novel about a young girl trying to find her way through the loss of her best friend. Holly McGhee has written several children's books under a pen name, but Matylda Bright and Tender is her debut novel under her own name. McGhee drew on her own experience of being in a horrific car accident when she was a teenager to write Sussy and Guy's story. She wrote this children's novel as a way to express some of the pain she has carried with her for decades and to turn that pain into something positive.

The novel is primarily a journey about struggling to cope with a terrible loss and to move on. The story is told in first person by ten-year-old Sussy Reed. McGhee immediately establishes that a special friendship exists between Sussy and Guy by having Sussy remember how she came to love Guy in grade one when she was six years old. Guy, concerned that Sussy had left her jacket at home on a cool fall day, races to her house to retrieve it before the bus arrives. From that point on Sussy loved Guy. This act foreshadows both their blossoming friendship and the accident. It is Guy's care of Sussy that will create the bond of friendship but his concern for Sussy that marks their friendship will also be deadly.

When Guy dies in a car accident Sussy is emotionally shattered. She struggles to accept what has happened, that a car "...killed the one person in the world who meant more to me than anybody else." From the beginning there are signs that Sussy is not coping well with her friend's death. Once home from the hospital, Sussy demands to have the clothes she was wearing at the time of the accident; a sunflower shirt which Sussy calls "The Dying Day" shirt and a fire-engine-red pair of capris which have been repaired by her mother. Sussy wears this outfit for weeks, refusing to let her wash them. Eventually her mother, concerned about Sussy, buys her new clothing. Sussy only changes because some of the new clothing remind her of Guy.

Sussy understandably remains focused on Guy in the days following his death. "...and I lay in my bed and I wanted to go to the boy I loved. I wanted to go to Guy, to follow the path of my friend." At his funeral service though, Sussy believes she hears and sees Guy speak to her from his coffin. She believes she sees Guy, in his orange polo shirt and familiar jeans asking her  to promise to love Matylda enough for both of them. Sussy promises because "I had to love Matylda like he did. Enough for us both. She was all I had left of him. I had to do everything right. If I did everything right, I could hold on to Guy."

Sadly this puts so much pressure on Sussy that she begins to make choices that are not good. She struggles to figure out how she can love Matylda the way Guy did. When Matylda appears to stop eating, Sussy creates a project to find the most delicious crickets for her. They decide to try different fruits in the cricket traps. While her father gets the other items on their list, Sussy shops for the cricket bait in the produce section. However, she quickly  begins acting out, screaming the names of the fruits and kicking the cart around. Shoppers stare at her while inside Sussy feels tremendous anger towards Guy; "I was furious at Guy then, furious that he'd asked me to love the lizard like he did when I didn't know how...Furious that Matylda didn't love me, that she wouldn't even come to my hand, wouldn't eat my crickets...Furious I loved him so much."

Determined to make Matylda love her, Sussy decides to go to Total Pets to get some D3 powder. Mike suggests Sussy try feeding her lizard worms, but when he gets busy with a customer, Sussy's decides to steal tubs of worms. "And I heard, Sure you can --it's okay. Show her your love: bring her worms. Guy would want you to. He'd want her to have the worms." Sussy knows stealing is wrong because she hides the tubs in her closet and she tells Matylda it will be their secret. However, Sussy doesn't stop there and a week later steals a tree for Matylda's vivarium. "And as I watched her , looking glorious there under the tree I stole for her, I felt I was keeping my promise to Guy, loving her as much as he did. Doing just that. Sussy the Promise Keeper." 

When the time comes to return to school, it is one of many firsts that Sussy will do without Guy. Over the summer there has the first summer without Guy, and the first trip to Long Beach without him too. Sussy finally admits to her mother, "I don't know how to go without him...I miss him so much." But Sussy gets through her first walk to school without Guy, her first lunch and her first day without him. However, in her excitement over the first day of school, Sussy forgets about Matylda. Horrified and believing that this demonstrates she doesn't love Matylda enough, Sussy steals again from Total Pets but this time Mike tells her he knows what she's doing. Sussy flees the store and in a rage of anger against Guy for demanding she love Matylda the way he did, Sussy almost kills Matylda.

In this crisis she realizes two things; first that what happened to Guy will always be a part of her. "I got it--I was always going to be on Witchett somehow, was always gonna hear that crash--loud or quiet I'd hear it. I was supposed to hear it; it was part of me. Okay, dying day, you can stay." Secondly, she realizes that she does love Matylda in her own way. Matylda, who lost her tail when Sussy became enraged, has lost a part of herself just as Sussy lost a part of herself when Guy died. Sussy believes that Matlyda "...understood that I had to almost lose her to know how much I loved her" in the same way that Sussy realized how much she loved Guy only after he was killed in the accident.

Matylda, Bright and Tender is a poignant story about loss, forgiveness and acceptance, about healing from the deepest of hurts. Guy's death is heartbreaking, more so because McGhee really establishes the deep friendship that exists between Guy and Sussy at the beginning of the novel and because Guy is so full of concern for Sussy. Mature readers will wonder at the "what could have been..." for these two young people. Thankfully the novel's ending is both hopeful and satisfying. My only criticism is that it would be very likely today that a young girl like Sussy would be encouraged to receive some sort of counselling to help her process the death of her dearest friend, yet there is no mention of this ever being considered by Sussy's parents.

McGhee's family owns several leopard geckos and the traps she writes about in Matylda, Bright and Tender were actually designed by her husband.

Matylda, Bright and Tender is a short, but excellent novel, well written, with a simple but engaging cover that will appeal to young readers, teachers and book clubs. I look forward to reading more of McGhee's work.

Book Details:

Matylda, Bright and Tender by Holly McGhee
Berryville, VA: Candlewick Press              2017
210 pp.