
Book Review: Izzie’s Flora Day
Izzie’s Flora Day by Jude Carroll and Lone Warberg (illustration)
£5 from the Museum of Cornish Life Shop.
Izzie’s Flora Day is a charming story about the ancient annual celebration day of Helston to welcome the spring (known as Flora Day or Furry Day). It’s more than a story about a day, Carroll’s story shows us the whole importance of the heritage and tradition of Flora Day.
Carroll’s protagonist is Izzie, a primary school girl who will dance in the children’s dance, but it’s more than just her story. Carroll’s narrative choice considers time leading up to Flora Day, and begins in January with Uncle Roger saying, “only one hundred and twenty seven days ‘til Flora Day,” directing the reader to the significance that this festival has. It is Izzie’s story, but it is a celebration of a tradition handed down throughout the generations. Carrol captures how Flora Day rolls out the same way every year, and every year the town builds up to it, throws itself at it completely, reflects on it and then thinks about the following year.
Izzie’s Flora Day is from a child’s perspective, with all the awkwardness and angst of a child growing up. Not wanting too fancy a dress, not wanting to let anyone down, railing against the absence of her father, away fighting in a war. Carroll creates tension between mother and daughter that will feel familiar, with Uncle Roger the peacemaker.
Of course most of the action of the book falls in May – the days before and the evolution of the day itself. For anyone who has attended Flora Day (like me, for the first time in 2024 when I was the Museum’s Writer in Residence making observations as an outsider), the rituals that Carroll describes in the gathering of bluebells, the dressing of the town provides a lovely insight and different layer to the occasion.
Izzie’s Flora Day is a story for all generations, for those who love Flora Day (like Carroll!) and for those who want to lean into the traditions in a beautifully crafted story. It isn’t only a book to be read on Flora Day, but at any time. Perhaps even more so now, when the skies are grey and we all need to believe that Spring is just around the corner.
By Julia Webb-Harvey, research volunteer.