posted on 01 May 2025

Coorie Doon: A Scottish Lullaby Story by Jackie Kay, illustrated by Jill Calder

Jackie Kay, who was the Makar (poet laureate) of Scotland for five years from 2016 to 2021, has used her own memories of childhood to write a warm, lyrical story about the importance of family love and security in shaping a life. It’s also a paean of love to nature – its diversity and its permanence. Kay also revels in the use of Scottish dialect and is a skilful enough poet not to make it any sort of barrier to those not used to using that language.

Famously, Kay is of Nigerian heritage but she was adopted by white foster parents who loved her dearly – something she tells us about at the end of this book – and that experience is what she uses for the character of Shona, the little girl we meet at the beginning of the story. Tucked up at night by her father, he sings her beautiful traditional Scottish lullabies and encourages her to ‘Coorie doon’ – a Scottish term for what you might call ‘snuggling down’

Her mother would also sing to her and she’d drift off to sleep and dream of her times playing with her friends, running through fields and farms, riding a unicorn - while in the outside world nature in all its benign diversity carried on around the house where she was safely ‘cooried doon’.

And so it went until Shona herself is a grown woman of sixty and now it’s her turn to coorie doon her old dad under the same moon that had been there when the roles were reversed. Now, at the end of the day, the older Shona sits at the kitchen table, exhausted and makes her tea and sings a song to herself. Stepping out of the back door, she looks up and waves to the ‘horse moon’.

This is Jackie Kay’s first ever illustrated children’s picture book and she has been well served by the Dundee-born artist Jill Calder, whose rich, colourful full-page illustration create another dimension to the book. I especially like the way the illustrations gradually introduce us to the way Shona has aged and in that transition she sits by the side of the old dad’s bed and remains the child she had been. To our parents we will always be children, no matter what age we reach!

Available now from Walker Books, you will be able to get a copy from your local independent bookshop – who will, of course, be happy to order it for you if they don’t have it on their shelves.

 

Terry Potter

May 2025