Six Summers of Tash and Leopold by Danielle Binks

The title of this book is quite intriguing. You need to think about it both before and after reading this newest book by Danielle Binks. Before reading the title made me think was a Young Adult title - perhaps a first love story. And after reading this proved to be untrue. Also, the name choices are interesting. One is an abbreviated name and the other a full name. This could say Alytash and Leopold; or Tash and Leo.  As for the six summers you need to read the beginning of the book carefully to understand this idea. 

Tash's real name is Alytash Simons (a name I had no idea how to pronounce as I was reading) but she prefers to be called Tash. Leopold Zając has many names. His mum calls him Myszko which means mouse in Polish. His Uncle Alek calls him Lew which means lion also in Polish but in reality, he just wants everyone to call him Leo. Oh, and it would be great if everyone took the trouble to learn how to say his last name: Zye-onse.

Tash is unwell and has been in hospital for extended periods. She is sure her cancer will return, and she is terrified of this. This partly explains why, after years of friendship, she now seems to have rejected her friend Leo. She does not want to think about her life before or be reminded that she is 'the cancer girl'. Tash is staying home for now and homeschooling. 

Leo has his own demons. Dad has had to move away to live with his own parents in Western Australia because his gambling addiction has nearly ruined their family. Leo misses him dreadfully. 

As this story opens as Grade 6 is ending and so over the coming months Leo will start high school but instead of going to the local public comprehensive one, he has won a scholarship to the prestigious Como College. Leo is worried about leaving his only friend Rami and he is also dreading the long journey to reach this distant school each day. And he knows he has to live up to his mum's expectations. Then Leo discovers he simply cannot go to school. He is not deliberately avoiding high school but his anxiety is so acute he simply cannot attend. He can do his schoolwork at home but he simply cannot leave the house to catch the train. 

At the end of Grade 6 a couple of significant things have happened. Leo experienced his first dreadful panic attack and to make matters worse this happened in front of all the Grade 6 kids at the end of year waterslide day. Tash has not spoken to him in over a year and then suddenly she wants his help to deliver a letter to a lady, Mrs Shepparson, who lives nearby.

Mrs Shepparson has her own terrible life issues to deal with. Her son died aged twelve in the storm water drain, she is suffering from acrophobia, and developers are harassing her wanting to buy her sweet little house which is full of memories and colours. The only company she has is her dog named Rosie. And those letters (there seem to be lots of them) are a mystery. Then tragedy strikes and it seems the developers are to blame. All these things need to come together. Leo and Tash need to get to know Mrs Shepparson; Leo and Tash need to heal their friendship; and the bullying by the developers of the new housing estate must be uncovered and stopped.

Danielle Binks creates a strong sense of place in her book although it is fairly Melbourne centric. Having visited a few Melbourne suburbs (I do not live there) I could, however, easily visualise the street, culvert and storm water drain which are the main focus of the story. I read that the real suburb is Noble Park in Melbourne.

Blurb: Alytash and Leopold - Tash and Leo - are neighbours who used to be best friends, but aren't anymore, for reasons that Leo doesn't entirely understand. But now it's the last week of Year Six and Tash is standing in Leo's front yard with a misdelivered letter - and a favour to ask. It's a request that will set off a chain of events in their little crescent in Noble Park, a suburb that is changing, and fast. As they solve an unfolding neighbourhood mystery and help Ms Shepparson, a reclusive neighbour with a tragic past, Tash and Leo each has to confront fault lines in their own recent histories and families. They will discover that friendships can grow and change, that bravery takes many forms, and that, most of all - whatever the future holds - friends and family are what matter.

I think readers aged 11+ either at the end of Primary school or in High School will enjoy Six Summers of Tash and Leopold. I do like the cover. My label for this book is Young Adult - I wonder if this book has been submitted for the CBCA Book of the Year Awards 2025 and if it has, I think it might be a notable title.

Here are a few text quotes:

"I think it's a pretty good test of a friendship, being apart for a while and coming back together again, seeing if it makes you feel more or less like yourself."

"The past can never be changed, but 'history' is ongoing - we try to understand what happened, and we find new evidence or new accounts that fill out our understanding and provide new context. Which means history is an ongoing conversation that we can always learn more about, but the past is a fixed point that's just kind of there waiting for us to dig up and better understand. "

"Everyone keeps telling me that the cancer isn't back, that I've been given the all clear,' she made bunny rabbit air quotes with her fingers, ' but all I can hear is yet."

"It's easy for historians - they look at the past like rewinding a movie, able to skip backwards and forwards seamlessly so that all the events line up and make sense, dominoes falling in place along the timeline. Uncertainty doesn't factor in once the story's been written, and it's easy to forget the people in the middle of all that history, who never knew whether or not things would work out in the end."

Reading reviews of Six Summers of Tash and Leopold I made some discoveries - things I might not have thought of:

1.  It is essential to turn back to the beginning of this book and re read the letter Leo writes to Tash, which is how the book begins and yes, it is how the book ends too. 

2. The publisher has likened this book to Bridge to Terabithia and I thought oh no surely not but - well you need to discover why this is actually one book you could connect with Six Summers of Tash and Leopold.

Read this extensive interview with Paperbark Words and Joy Lawn. 

Review quotes:

This is really a book that displays the human condition at its best and worst, and we just love the characters all the more, for it. Both Tash and Leopold are authentic kids who we care deeply about, and they live on long after the book is finished. Fabulously for a YA novel, the conclusion makes you re-open the book at the first page to read again what you have already absorbed – a genuinely brilliant inclusion.  Kids' Book Review

The Six Summers of Tash and Leopold is also filled with wonderfully diverse characters. Leo has Polish heritage, Tash has mixed race South African heritage, and the peripheral characters come from various backgrounds: Rami is Indian, Fatemah has Muslim heritage, and the librarian at their primary school is non-binary. The Book Muse

As they solve an unfolding neighbourhood mystery and help Ms Shepparson, a reclusive neighbour with a tragic past, Tash and Leo each must confront fault lines in their own recent histories and families. They will discover that relationships can grow and change, that bravery takes many forms, and that, most of all – whatever the future holds – friends and family are what matter. Buzz Words

I do, however, need to do a little nit picking about this book. I really did not understand why the Primary School Teacher-Librarian was a non-binary person with the courtesy title Mx Chambers. I'm always happy find a kind, sympathetic, and in this case, wise teacher-librarian in any story or school library, but I found this character label inclusion a little contrived. I did do some research because this term was new to me, in fact at first I thought it was a typo, and here is what I discovered: Mx. is a title that indicates neither marital status nor gender. The Reading Time reviewer agrees with me about this small point. 

Speaking of typos - sorry I did warn you I was going to be a bit picky - if you have this book in your hands turn to page 225. I feel there might be a word missing from this sentence. It is not crucial to the plot but it confused me:

"At that, I threw my arms around Tash - pinning her own in place if only so I could help warm them - and I felt her turn her head and rest her cheek atop my head."

Is this meant to say pinning her arms in place? or pinning her hands in place? We have read in the previous section that it is winter, and they are both quite cold.

One more problem - sorry again. Leo and his former friend Rami are library monitors, or as they are called in this book Library Leaders. Clearly Danielle Binks does appreciate libraries. The Primary school library sounds terrific in contrast with the non-staffed, high tech, impersonal, and 'all for show' posh high school library. Early in the book Leo quotes his mum who quotes Professor R David Lankes - 

"Bad libraries build collections, good libraries build services, great libraries build communities."

I watched this video by Danielle Binks from her Instagram page and I know she deeply appreciates school libraries but there is a small error in her story (well it feels like an error to me). Some libraries use little paper slips to record the date a book is due back - this was certainly a standard library procedure in the past. The little slips are called date due slips, not catalogue cards. As a teacher-librarian this sentence gave me a bit of a jolt (sorry I know this is so trivial). You can see examples below.

"Over the break I received a letter in the mail ... from Librarian Chambers. I guess they meant to give it to me at graduation, but then I didn't go. It was an old-school library catalogue card - the ones that used to be taped into the back of library books to show how many times a title had been borrowed, before everything got digitised."

Date Due slip ready for date stamping

Cards in a card catalogue

Companion books:

Grace Notes

The Year Mrs Montague Cried

The Honest Truth

Exit through the gift shop

A Good Night for Shooting Zombies

Small Mercies by Bridget Krone

"Once when Gandhi stepped off a train in India, his sandal fell between the train and the platform and he couldn't get it back. So he took off his other sandal and threw it down too. When people asked him why he did that, he explained that one sandal was no use to anyone. It was better that someone finds two sandals on the track than just one. This taught me to look at problems with new eyes."

This is a deeply personal story. Mercy lives with her two elderly foster aunts in the South African town of Pietermaritzburg. Mercy's life seems to be on a precipice. She is fearful that the "authorities" will discover the poverty and difficulties of her home. She finds the demands of her teacher overwhelming.

Aunt Mary declares they will need to take in a lodger. Mr Singh arrives with his stories of Mohandas. Mercy discovers this is actually Mahatma Gandhi. Mercy has a school assignment where she has to talk about a role model - some one who inspires her. Perhaps Mercy can share some of Mr Singh's stories in her talk.

Meanwhile a nasty developer has arrived on the scene. He has plans to knock down their house and clear the empty land next door. The house is very old and it seems to be falling apart. Aunt Flora is also falling apart - she has Alzheimers. Aunt Mary explains to Mercy:

"it's as if her roads are blocked. Some of the roads in her brain have closed. Some streets have become one-ways, some roads that used to be busy motorways are now cul-de-sacs. There are lots of pot-holes and dead ends... so her thoughts can't get through like they used to."

Have you ever noticed the way authors use shoes as a way to explain poverty. Often a character will have shoes that are way too small and, as readers, we feel the pain of every step and the despair that money is too short for new or even second hand replacements.  In Small Mercies Bridget Krone also uses shoes as a way to let us know things are tough for Mercy.

"Mercy had to walk fast to keep up. She was wearing flip-flops that were too big for her and they made an embarrassing slap on the tiles of the shopping centre floor." Later when Mr Singh takes Mercy to visit a statue commemorating Gandhi she develops very painful blisters from her flip-flops and the long journey is grueling.

Here are some other signposts of the family poverty:

"Aunt Mary cutting the crusts off with the broken bread knife and Aunt Flora fussing ... and then wrapping the Marmite sandwich up tightly in an old bread bag. There was a time when they'd wrapped sandwiches in wax paper, but these days they recycled everything possible: even tea bags, after their fourth or fifth dunking in boiling water, were put on the veranda to dry and then soaked in parafin to be used as firelighters in the winter."

"She didn't have a phone, and the TV set, before it got sold at the auction, had lived in the corner of the dining room on a trolley, covered with a green velvet cloth fringes with pom poms."

Mercy is so afraid of a visit by the social worker that she has memorised some words to at least postpone her removal by the authorities:

"According to the Children's Act of 2010, each child has the right to legal representation and I demand that the order be held pending this process."

This is book I HIGHLY recommend. I know that this story will linger with me for a long time. It is an example of carefully crafted storytelling. In my head I talked to Bridget Krone as I was reading this book hoping she could help Mercy. I was especially worried when Mercy misunderstood a conversation she overhears which is actually about Aunt flora needing to go into aged care. Mercy thinks Aunt Mary is planning to send her to a children's home. The resolution of this in Chapter 28 made me sigh with relief. I also want to thank Bridget for her character Mr Singh who offers quiet wisdom to Mercy and who is also able to produce delicious food exactly when it is needed.

Read this review for more plot details:

The short chapters are a nice treat for the reading level,particularly since the themes have a depth to them that take some reflecting.Krone notes that her “favorite stories are those that, just when you expect a lesson, sing a song instead.” Small Mercies is just that surprising song, full of light and sweetness. Readers will carry the melody in their hearts long after the last page is turned. NY Journal of Books

Sensitive, funny, and tender. Kirkus

Small Mercies (published in 2020) is a book from South Africa.  Here is the US cover.  Which do you prefer? I was excited to read the review by Ms Yingling.

I would pair small Mercies with The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Patterson and these titles:

Pictures of Hollis Woods

When Friendship followed me Home

Missing May

Speechless

I think adults would enjoy Small Mercies. It made me think of these two adult novels: