The Dam by David Almond (review)

A nameless father and daughter walk out at dawn to a special valley; there a dam will create a reservoir that will drown the habitats of both the animals and the people that lived there ("And this will be washed away"; "And this will never be seen again"). As the pair walks through the empty houses soon to be submerged under the flood, the girl plays her fiddle in tribute to the music that had been played there over the years, as one final farewell. When the area becomes a lake, the father and daughter return, and "behind the dam, within the water, the music stays, will never be gone." While this drifts a little too far into the abstract at times, it's a lyrical treatment of a colossal metamorphosis of the landscape, and it offers possibilities for talking about the changes in our own regions and what was there before our everyday sights. Pinfold's mixed-media illustrations make the abstract concrete in carefully designed spreads that vary between small, tidily arrayed thumbnails and three-quarter and full spreads. The use of black and white and, more often, the olive cast of raw umber gives a hushed historical feel that contrasts with the full color of the newly created lake and its environs. An afterword explains that this is based on the real-life experience of folk musician Mike Tickell and his daughter, and it might be effective to draw on that text as explanation before sharing the story with youngsters to make the most of the story's emotional impact.