“It’s autumn and often raining. You slip on wet leaves when you walk to school. I’m in the first year and my name is Mia. I’m sad because my mother and father argue with each other, mostly in the evenings when they think I don’t hear. They think you don’t notice when they’re not friends, but you do.”
Seven-year-old Mia’s everyday life after her parents’ separation, in new family groupings, missing Dad a lot and seeing him only at the weekends, is depicted with perfect pitch. The book was Gunilla Bergström’s first, and when it was originally published in 1971, it caused a controversy that reached beyond Sweden. Among other things, she was telephoned by an Italian newspaper asking whether it was really true that she had written a children’s book about divorce. While she was writing Mia’s Dad Moves Out, she had an idea for a book about a little boy who didn’t want to go to bed, an idea that the following year resulted in Good night, Alfie Atkins. The rest is history…