Review by Frank Plowright
XII Days combines two previously published graphic novels about the long strange journey taken by six primary school children who tumble into the water when a bridge collapses and find themselves in an altogether different place. In the Forest of the Peaches the children meet a friendly, gentle people called the Peaches, who assign spiritual capabilities to each child and expect them solve problems besetting them.
Campbell Whyte spends considerable time over the opening pages establishing the personalities and desires of the six spotlighted children, giving their later activities greater meaning. Laurence is a dreamer and David a jock wannabe, while his sister Lilly loves her pets. Amanda is asthmatic and timid, Ben adventurous, and Nathan creative, certain he’s going to be making comics or videogames. One imagines he reflects the younger Whyte, striving to create artistically in so many different ways. As the children separate for individual explorations Whyte alters the art to reflect their circumstances, such as a chapter centred on Nathan drawn as if a pixelated video game.
Many chapters could be isolated and read as individual comics, such is the level of creativity and imagination, and the sheer work Whyte puts into creating surroundings makes them all immersive experiences. Great thought has been applied to the overall background, with so many forms of Australian culture and wildlife represented, and the world building occurring gradually and seductively. This extends to chapter-separating pages giving greater background to events and society.
While the imagination is to be applauded, Home Time reads better as a single volume rather than two whose publication was separated by three years as it’s more apparent how seeds planted in what was originally Under the River come to fruition in what’s now titled Beyond the Weaving.
The children may seem too young for this to be a coming of age story, but one interpretation is their experiences being allegorical and representing puberty. Each child progresses, and through experience and necessity becomes so much more than they would have been had they never discovered the Forest of the Peaches. In a dense and engrossing read not everything is spelled out, Whyte in some cases leaving events open to interpretation and in others having the confidence in readers to join the dots. It also leaves space for young readers to question what’s happening and if it’s right.
Home Time is richly structured and greatly rewarding. In a just world it would sit upon every library bookshelf as a world waiting to be discovered.
