Changes

|sort=Illustrated Mum

|title=The Illustrated Mum

|date=March 2000

|isbn=0440863686

}}

Like her mother, Marigold, Dolphin likes illustrations. She loves to draw and draw and draw, filling page after page of her colouring books with intricate designs taking every tiny inch of white space available. Every feeling, every wish, every daydream she has is contained within her drawings - they are full of flowers, fairies, stars, the seaside, rings, bangles and all things glittery. On bad days they are full of witches and wizards and demons and evil fates befalling her enemies. Sadly for Dolphin, a gentle, quiet, dreamy but shy and nervous child, there are many bad days. Dolphin and her family, her mother Marigold and her sister Star, are what you might call "different". They don't really meet the apple pie ideal of the nuclear family with its neat, trimmed lawn, regular meals and after-school activities every night of the week. And for her difference Dolphin is often bullied at school, she doesn't have a best friend, and her teachers treat her with barely-concealed disdain. She may be good at reading, but she's "dyslexic or something" and so lessons don't come easy either.