Changing body | Press

For children, the wardrobe is often home to scary monsters. For older children, it becomes the witness of the changing body. In his collection of poetry In my wardrobe, Aimée Verret skillfully captures the experience of a young girl suspended between childhood and adolescence. Press spoke to her.

Véronique Larocque
Press

“We often read: ‘I can’t wait to be big.’ But, I think it’s rarer than you read: “I’m not ready. It happens too fast. I still want to have fun with my toys ”, explains the author, who puts this type of apprehension in the foreground in her first collection of poetry intended for adolescents. “In my wardrobe / still hanging / clothes that are too tight that I want to keep […] My costume stretched out over my back / I become a child again / at will, ”she writes.

If everyone goes through this floating period between childhood and adolescence, no one does it at the same pace, which sometimes damages friendships. “It’s difficult to be the youngest child who says: ‘Me, I still want to play with my Barbies’, while the others are planning big business for themselves,” explains Aimée Verret. The heroine of her collection will also lose her best friend in the race to adulthood. “I blame him / for having grown up without expecting me”, we can read in the book, which is part of the preliminary list of the Prix des libraires du Québec pour la jeunesse.

Aimée Verret also tackles with finesse another change that occurs with puberty: the way people look at others.

To tame this growing attention, the heroine finds refuge in her wardrobe while she gets used to her own changing body.

“Personal autonomy and sovereignty over our body is super important to me. […] When we get old, all of a sudden, we become like an object of desire. My body, I did not choose it. If I walk in the street, it’s not necessarily that I want to show it to others, ”says the author.

For girls … and boys

If the heroine of the collection is a girl and she experiences very feminine changes (“I liquefy myself / in my panties”), Aimée Verret hopes that In my wardrobe will also challenge the boys. First, because the book can help them “understand what it is to be a girl”. Then, “the boys may not have a period, but they also have changes happening on their side that they cannot control.” “Even if it’s not the same thing, I dare to hope that they can come together with the idea that there is a race between the body and the head and that sometimes the body wins. “

The one who has written three books of poetry for adults and many books for children fear that poetry turns off young readers? ” [L’initiation à la poésie] goes through schools a lot. I see that in recent years, there has really been an openness on the part of teachers to teach poetry and to bring out the great classics that rhyme “, notes the one who will be at the Montreal Book Fair at the end of November. .

In my wardrobe

Aimee Verret

The Short Scale Editions

From 11 years old

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