Unpacking “Through Greta's Eyes”
Unpacking Through Greta's Eyes
When people ask me about Through Greta's Eyes, the first thing they sometimes assume is that it's a book about mums being on their phones. I've even had a reader feel a little protective on behalf of mums everywhere — as if I was pointing the finger! So let me set the record straight: the mum on her phone is just the starting point. The story is really about something much bigger.
How the story came together
Like most ideas, it began with a question. We all know the experience of picking up our phones to check one thing and then looking up forty minutes later wondering where the time went. Screen time is something we all grapple with — adults just as much as children, maybe more. Reports and app timers confront us with the evidence, and we're genuinely surprised by ourselves.
So I knew I wanted to write about that. But a story where a mum tells her child to put down a screen felt too familiar, too expected. Too bland, honestly. And then the better question arrived: what if it went the other way? What if the child was the one with something to teach?
That small reversal changed everything.
Why Greta?
Once I decided the child would be the one leading the way, I needed a name. And when I landed on Greta, I realised immediately why it felt right — because of Greta Thunberg. Here is a young person who stepped onto a world stage and held her ground in conversations that many adults couldn't match. She hadn't waited to accumulate decades of credentials before she had something worth saying. She just knew — and she spoke.
That felt like exactly the message I wanted woven through my story. We no longer have to wait for a young person to earn a PhD before we decide it's worth listening to them. With the internet, with online tutorials, with access to knowledge that previous generations couldn't have imagined, young people are educating themselves and forming genuinely important views from an early age. They have things to say. We should be listening.
Narcissus and the ancient Greeks
There's another layer to this that I find quietly delightful. The ancient Greeks gave us the myth of Narcissus — a young man so captivated by his own reflection that he couldn't look away. We've inherited centuries of wisdom from those same Greeks. And yet here we are, staring into glowing screens, unable to put them down, doing exactly what Narcissus did.
Meanwhile, in the story, the child is reading a book. She's the one seeking out knowledge. The irony isn't lost on me.
A non-hierarchical family
At the heart of all of this is something I believe deeply: that families don't have to be arranged like a ladder, with wisdom flowing in only one direction. Yes, I've been on the planet longer. I've gathered experience and made mistakes and learned things the slow way. But that doesn't mean I have a monopoly on insight. Everyone around the table has something to contribute — including, and sometimes especially, the youngest people in the room.
Through Greta's Eyes is my small celebration of that. A little girl with a book, teaching her mum to look up.