Finding your Flicker of Courage by Lu Fraser
Mavis the Bravest is a chicken with plenty of fears and she teaches young readers that it is ok to be worried and scared for that is where bravery comes from. Check out the blog today from author, Lu Fraser, about where the idea for Mavis came from!
Finding your Flicker of Courage
Lu Fraser takes a look at the bravery inside us ALL…
I’m not going to jump.
Long before I step up to the edge of the swimming pool, long before my toes curl over the edge of the sticky tiles, I am utterly convinced of one thing – I don’t have what it takes to leap into the water. I can’t find the faintest flicker of courage inside me and, even more importantly, I don’t believe I ever will. More than four decades later I can still remember the bite of my own disappointment as I sat by the side of that pool for the rest of the day, missing out on all the fun.
Fast-forward through the years and suddenly I’m the parent at the edge of the pool with the tear-stained toddler and I know, as I look at my daughter’s despairing face, that I’m not going to let history repeat itself. The problem, I realise, is not the jump itself but in the metaphorical ‘run-up’, and the answer is simple – my daughter needs to believe she has the capacity for braveness in the first place.
It’s probably around that time that my inexorable path towards ‘Mavis The Bravest’ began, the story of the little chicken who sits in the dark and knits her way through life, too scared to join in with anything at all. Indeed, Mavis is a chicken who finds EVERYTHING scary (‘night time…& day time…and anything hairy…’) but, with the aid of her best friend, Marge, she comes to realise that braveness resides in each and every one of us, quietly sleeping until we really need it. ‘You’re already as brave as you wish you could be!’ Marge smiles at Mavis & I can’t help wondering what we might achieve in this world if we all grew up steadfast in that particular belief – that we are born with ample braveness tucked inside us, simply waiting for a call to arms…
It took a little while longer (and A LOT more swimming pools) before I discovered another astonishing truth about bravery, something that I was determined to weave into our tale – bravery isn’t the absence of fear. You can be the most scared little chicken in the whole barn, with ‘knobbly knees knocking’, but that doesn’t stop you from being incredibly brave at the same time, too. In fact, being fearful is a pre-requisite to bravery – the two go hand-in-hand! Of all the many things I have wanted to say in my stories, I think this might be one of the most important of all.
As I turn the final pages of our story, with Sarah Warburton’s glorious illustrations shining up at me, I fervently hope that this little chicken will help a long line of readers to find their ‘flicker of courage’ but, in the end, even if our Mavis only makes a difference to just one person, then our story will have been a tale worth telling – ‘Mavis The Bravest’ will have achieved everything we set out to do.
How very lovely it would have been to have Mavis and Marge by my side as I stood on the edge of that swimming pool all those years ago.
I’m almost certain I would have jumped…
‘Mavis The Bravest’ – written by Lu Fraser, illustrated by Sarah Warburton, published by Simon & Schuster
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Federation.