I love you Zelda Bloo by Gretel Killeen
Penguin, 2010. ISBN 9780143011606.
This is a story about a helicopter crash. The story begins in the back
of the crashed helicopter, with the heroine of the story, Zelda,
struggling for her life and her mother and the pilot dead.
Zelda has a conversation with an imaginary person in the corner to
explain how she has ended up in a crashed helicopter. She has an older
brother and sister and her Dad directs movies. Zelda's parents divorced
when she was 5 after her Dad ran off with one of his movie stars.
'Essentially since Dad divorced her all those years ago, Mum had been
like a walking broken heart'. (pg 34)
After reading an article in the National Geographic, her mother decides
she wants to make a documentary about child soldiers and takes
Zelda
with her to the mountains to interview the child soldiers. After
days of haggling with the pilot, Zelda and her mother set off in
the helicopter to find the child soldiers; Zelda dressed in gold
stilettos, a daffodil hat and
a bikini. The helicopter crashes. The pilot dies and Zelda half pushes
him out of
the plane. Her mother dies too. She finds a gun in her Mum's back pack
which she accidentally shoots and the animals hovering round the
wrecked helicopter run away. Then a boy appears. 'He was a boy as in
'not yet a man'. (pg 107)
Zelda pulls out the original National Geographic article from her Mum's
backpack and decides from the likeness of the photo in the article that
the boy is 'Saro Ecka, leader of the fearsome child warriors'. (pg108)
Zelda then thinks about killing herself when she finds a gun in the
helicopter. She does manage to shoot and injure Saro with the gun but
then she realises that she needs Saro to stay alive until they get
rescued.
The story ends where it began in the back of the helicopter. Zelda
dreams that she jumps out of the helicopter and runs away with Saro.
Zelda's responses to the situation could be seen as humorous probably
depending on the reader's age. Some may find this story gruesome.
Jenny Brisbane