Kizzy is a Diddakoi - half gypsy half Irish. She lives with her grandmother in a gypsy caravan and with her beautiful old horse Joe. The gypsy camp is on some land owned by Admiral Sir Archibald Cunningham Twiss.
"He had put aside the orchard for the travellers and laid on water, a tap and a trough for them, though the village did not approve."
Kizzy does not go to school but then one of the 'do-gooders' in the town tells the authorities and so she is forced to attend. On the first day the girls taunt her about her secondhand clothes so that night she destroys them and from then on turns up at school in her own ragged clothes and boots. Kizzy's grandmother is very old and sadly one day she dies while Kizzy is at school. After the funeral poor Kizzy has to endure the burning of their caravan (a gypsy tradition) - her only home and the one place she has felt safe is now gone. Kizzy tries to run away but she becomes very unwell. Admiral Twiss takes her home and he and his two male servants - Peters and Nat - nurse her back to health but the town will not allow her to stay in the big house. The matter goes to court and it feels for a moment that Kizzy will be sent to a children's home but at the last minute a new single lady who has moved into a local cottage offers to care for Kizzy.
Olivia Brooke is a woman of enormous good-sense and kindness. She does not chide Kizzy or punish her. Instead she is patient while Kizzy adjusts to her new life and copes with her grief. But school is still torture. The gang of girls attack her so viciously on the way home each day - they trip her, the tie her ankles with a rope, and the ram her into a tree. It is a dreadful scene but luckily Miss Brooke is there and she finds exactly the right way to stop this and make sure all the girls feel enormous remorse.
"They gang up on a particular child ... if one clamps down as Mrs Blount did, it goes underground and it's worse for the victim. How can it be dealt with?' ... 'For a moment they thought they had killed Kizzy. They won't forget that ... it's a children's war. Let the children settle it."
Kizzy spends a few days at home and then she makes a plan to run away. She simply cannot go back to that school. She will take her horse Joe and a few supplies and ride off but on the day she plans to do this she is taken to the big house and told her horse has died.
There were two points while I was reading this book that I just had to stop and walk away. That scene I mentioned where Kizzy is badly bullied by a large group of girls in her school. And later when the girls come to visit and she accidentally pours petrol on a fire which I was sure would end in disaster.
There are also some absolutely heartwarming moments in this story - such as when Miss Brooke and the Admiral set up Kizzy's room with furniture from the big house; when the Admiral makes Kizzy a small replica caravan; and near the end when she is gifted a beautiful dress that matches exactly the one in the portrait of the young Kezia Cunningham - the admiral's grandmother. Miss Brooks also makes delicious food, and she is happy to eat outside near a fire with Kizzy in the same way Kizzy did this with her grandmother.
Here are a few text quotes to give you a flavour of this classic book which was first published in 1972.
"Mrs Blount had touched a sore spot; in Kizzy's family, as in some gypsy clans, a child is given three names: a secret one whispered by its mother the moment it is born and, when it is grown, whispered again into the child's ear; a private or 'wagon' name which is used only by its own people, and a third open name by which it is known to the world. Kizzy seemed only to have one, but that was because she was what they called her, a 'diddakoi', not all gypsy."
Kizzy does not know the date of her birthday.
"There was another side to birthdays Mrs Blount did now know; the girls got you by your arms and legs and bumped you on the asphalt playground, once for every year, and they pulled your hair for the number of them with extra tugs 'to make your hair grow' and 'for luck'. ... but they did not like to touch her dirty boots so they tugged her hair instead, handfuls of her mop of dark curls. Kizzy had red patches on her scalp every day now and they ached at night."
The Didakoi won the Whitbread Award in 1972. Other winners that may be familiar to you were: The Battle of Bubble and Squeak by Philippa Pearce, The Witches by Roald Dahl, The Great Elephant Chase by Gillian Cross, Skellig by David Almond, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling, The Explorer by Katherine Rundell, Voyage of the Sparrowhawk by Natasha Farrant, The Skylarks War by Hilary McKay.
The Costa Book Award for Children's Book, formerly known as the Whitbread Award (1971–2005), was an annual literary award for children's books, part of the Costa Book Awards, which were discontinued in 2022, the 2021 awards being the last made. In 1976 the BBC made a television series based on this book and in 2002 it was released again with a new title and cover:
Just so you don't get confused I discovered that in1940 Rumer Godden wrote a novel for adults with the title Gypsy Gypsy. She wrote over twenty novels for adults and twenty-five books for children.
The Diddakoi made me think about The Present Takers by Aidan Chambers which contains terrible and vicious bullying. The Present Takers upset me so much it is not a book I could easily ever re-read. I am so glad I discovered The Didakoi and I especially loved the fairy-tale ending and touches of a love story but Kirkus roundly condemn it and so does this reviewer.
I picked up The Diddakoi at a recent charity book sale. To my eye this book has stood the test of time and it is still available. I guess you need to make your own judgement about its appropriateness. As a child I loved books by Rumer Godden (1907-1998) and more recently I also enjoyed The Story of Holly and Ivy.
