Coorie Doon: A Scottish Lullaby Story

By Author / Illustrator

Jackie Kay, Jill Calder

Genre

Family & Home

Age range(s)

Publisher

Walker Books

ISBN

9781529506662

Format

Hardback

Published

02-01-2025

Synopsis

"A warm hug of a book ... this seems as personal as any of Kay's poetry. And as full of love." The Herald. The stunning debut picture book from Jackie Kay, one of the UK's foremost poets, rooted in familiar folk songs, and injected with gloriously lyrical old Scots.

When Shona was a wee bit bairn
Her daddy would sing Coorie Doon,
Till she cooried doon and fell asleep
Under the huge eye o' the moon.

Every night, Shona is tucked into bed by her loving parents, who sing her old and familiar folk songs: Tiree Love Song; Goodnight, Irene and Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go? And as Shona sleeps, we follow the people and places that drift into her dream world: her best "fiere", Ali, her dog, Marley, her cat, Flo... Then, years later, we meet Shona when she is sixty - actually sixty years old! - as she tucks her daddy, now an old man, into bed. And it is her turn to sing to him: "Coorie Doon, Coorie Doon, wee Daddy".

Magnificently illustrated by Jill Calder, this is a truly original picture book that celebrates the small, perfect rituals of childhood and how they become a vital part of who we are. The book also includes a QR code to scan that will link through to a video from Jackie Kay and free audio recordings of songs from the book from legendary folk singers Peggy Seeger, Claire Brown and Suzanne Bonnar.

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Reviews

Lizi

Corrie Doon is a Scottish lullaby story that follows Shona from being a small girl tucked in by her dad and having wonderful dreams, to being a grown woman tucking her dad in and experiencing magic in the nights herself.

Written by Jackie Kay, an acclaimed Scottish poet, the story is very lyrical and features many different songs she has come across throughout her life. There is a qr code inside the book where you can listen to versions of some of them and my daughter and I enjoyed doing this together.

One of the limitations of this book for me personally is the Scots dialect that words are written in - it doesn't work as well in my English accent! However I think this would be a beautiful book for Scottish children or perhaps Scottish parents/grandparents to share with their offspring. The pictures help to explain the words and each page has lots of detail to take in.

The author has also chosen to mirror her own life story in the illustrations - Kay is of Nigerian/Scottish decent and was adopted by her Scottish parents. I didn't notice this throughout the story until I read this fact in the authors note at the end - the book is so full of love and that was our focus as we enjoyed the tale together. I can appreciate however that there will be children for whom this representation may be a rare time that they see themselves in a story. It's a lovely book - a definite recommend if you're Scottish!

Picture book / Reviewed by Lizi Backhouse, teacher