A Boy Called Christmas - Matt Haig & Chris Mould

A Boy Called Christmas

When I first read the blurb: "You are about to read the true story of Father Christmas" and I saw that it was authored by Matt Haig, I knew I wanted to read this. From the very first page, I was smitten.

A Boy Called Christmas is rollicking good fun, full of laughs for child and adult alike on every page, (and Haig has taken the opportunity to poke fingers at the state of the international nation). It's also an adventure quest story, perfect for shared bedtime reading - or cosying up under the Christmas tree. And Chris Mould provides plenty of illustrated pages.

For anyone who's been wondering how to chat about the way we treat outsiders to young children - without getting all politicised - this could be a fun place to start.

If you believe in Father Christmas - the old man dressed in white and red, whose reindeers like Donner and Cupid and Blitzen (okay, Cupid might not be mentioned in this book!) fly him through the night delivering gifts to children who've been good; if you believe in the potential of humanity to be a generous and giving species; if you believe in the possibilities for little boys and girls to go out and become who they want to be; and if you really like a bit of mischievous fun about how things came to be, chances are you'll love this little book.

There is an elf swear word in the novel: impossible.


A Boy Called Christmas has been nominated for the 2017 Carnegie medal.


Publication details: 2016, Canongate, Edinburgh, paperback
This copy: received for review from the publisher

Alpha – Bessora and Barroux

Alpha - Bessora & Barroux (translated: Sarah Ardizzone)

Alpha is a book I would have on my coffee table, my reception area table, the boardroom table, the canteen, and definitely in every classroom or library: big, bold, great to look at, immediately immersive, whichever pages you are flicking through and something that I want everyone to see.

This is the story of Alpha, a cabinet maker who journeys from Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire, Africa) to meet his family at the Gare Du Nord (Paris, France, Europe).  Along the way, he compares himself to a backpacking adventurer, although without a visa and dwindling cash, he finds that most other people regard him as an illegal immigrant.

The Wall - William Sutcliffe

The Wall by William Sutcliffe

 

Review by M

The Wall has been nominated and longlisted for the Carnegie medal 2014.

The Wall is a compelling story about a young teenage boy who follows his curiosity, stumbles into something he can’t control and then tries to do ‘the right thing’, which heartbreakingly sets in motion a train of events that go catastrophically wrong.

Based on experiences of Israeli settlements of the occupied West Bank and written as a modern fable, The Wall is clearly intended to be a profound and important novel. Exploring the good and the ugly of moral decision making, it is one of those ought-to-read novels with a heartbreakingly poignant story and an overall call to action.

But, for all of its heavy and heartfelt subject matter, ironically this novel has a quiet and gentle tone.  The writing is often descriptive and the pace is often quite slow even though it is punctuated by a variety of chases and action. I occasionally found myself skipping bits because I wanted to know what happened. Saying that, the prose is eloquent so if you choose to linger, you’ll be in a good place. For me, Joshua's family problems and small romantic developments weakened the plot and distracted from the story.

There is violence in the novel but it is not graphic and would be suitable for younger readers. The back of the book recommends further reading for readers who are interested in discovering more about the conflicts between Israel and Palestine.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in how we live now and how we could live tomorrow. Also recommended for any teen who’s wondering about how to find their way in the world.

Publication details: Bloomsbury, 2013, London, hardback

This copy: review copy from the publisher

Half Lives - M's review

Half Lives by Sara Grant

 

Reviewed by M

 

I think my teen self would have devoured Half Lives.

Half Lives is an interweaved apocalyptic story moving between the present and the future. A terrorist virus threatens the world and teenaged Icie’s only hope of survival is an old nuclear-waste bunker in a desert mountain just outside Las Vegas. Skip many years forward and a new community, Forreal, find that their defensive, post-apocalyptic life is under threat.

Half Lives by Sara Grant

The chapters move from Icie’s first person narrative which is written in the present to third person accounts from Forreal, set in the future. Icie’s contemporary teen account reads at first like a ‘get down with the teens’ voice. Soz. But it is the third-person accounts about Forreal that take this even further.

The Forreal community lives on a mountain and worships The Great I AM.  They have a sacred space, rules and sacred texts. They are passive and believe in peace. They have a number of Just Sayings which remind me of the Gods Gardeners’ Hymns in Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood.

At first, the social media references were slightly irritating for me. It sounds like it’s been crafted for a timebound teen audience who will delight in seeing themselves on the pages. But I stuck with it and I’m glad I did. I think it worked (although it would be interesting to re-read in a few years' time).

The lingo is really an essential ‘point’ of the book: how words, culture, symbols and other forms of communication travel across time and place. Have you ever played Chinese Whispers or Broken Telephone? It’s a bit like that. For me, this was the aspect of the novel that stood out most - and the bit that I enjoyed. While being a very serious novel, it also becomes an interesting and fun parody of contemporary teen behaviour and their reliance on social media (adults too, of course!).  At some points, the novel might well be asking whether there is any real depth to contemporary life? This is a question that the plot may raise for individual readers and one that the narrative leaves them free to work out for themselves. There is no right or wrong in this novel.

When I think of Sara Grant, I immediately think of human rights. She’s shared platforms with Amnesty International and her first novel, Dark Parties (which I have not read), has been endorsed by them.  She also helped to set up the Edge authors blog and so I expected that she would most likely be tackling big or controversial issues and that Half Lives would be gritty. Big issues yes. Gritty, in its issues and the plot – yes, but not in the way it is written.

The novel has many other themes which are prominent throughout the plot:

• Nuclear power and waste are central to the plot although it didn’t have as much impact on my thoughts as I thought it would/should.
• Faith, particularly a religious faith: where it comes from, what it does and why we hold on to it.
• How individuals respond to disasters: not natural disasters but human-made disasters. With whom do we bond in these times and against whom do we separate or even attack? How much do we know or understand before we make a decision? Should we act or not? It’s about human agency.
• Who and what are terrorists? Is it anyone who is 'not us'? Anyone who is ‘out there’?

 Characterwise, I didn’t feel any great connections to any of them. I should have because, of course, not everyone in an apocalyptic novel survives...!  Ironically, I sometimes found myself asking: “is this for real?” However, on the whole, the plot is highly believable (although  the possible love triangle storyline confused me and the situation Forreal finds itself in felt a bit too fabricated).

While Half Lives addresses some controversial topics, I finished the book with a warm smile on my face. Fans of Marcus Sedgwick’s Midwinterblood may enjoy this as the ways symbols and stories carry over time are central to both novels. Fans of Saci Lloyd might also enjoy Half Lives as Sara Grant adopts a stylised teen voice to take on very big topical and interesting issues about the world in which we currently live. I would happily recommend this to any teen reader. It is an issues book but it is also an easy and page-turning read combined with an exciting and thought-provoking plot.
  

Publication details: Indigo, May 2013, London, trade paperback

This copy: received for review from the publisher

 

Spoilerish reminders and thoughts:

• The origins of the Great I AM were wonderfully more substantial than my cynically flippant view of teenage selfhood had imagined!
• Have fun spotting the links between the present and the future. Especially name spotting: the names of the Forreal people are all taken from To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper, Finch, Atti, Cal, Dill, (May), and Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett).
• As characters, Greta and Atti seemed little more than plot devices – other readers, especially teens, may view this differently.

 

M's Review - Now Is the Time For Running

Now Is the Time For Running by Michael Williams

Now Is the Time For Running

First published in South Africa as The Billion Dollar Soccer Ball, Now Is the Time For Running is a novel about the courage, bravery, despair and hope that are required by ordinary, everyday adults and children in the face of xenophobia (the fear of people from another country).

This is a compelling story about two brothers, Deo and Innocent. It starts with a dusty game of football being played in a Zimbabwean village using an improvised soccer ball (a football). It’s around 2007 and the arrival of soldiers at the soccer game sets the novel on a dramatic and heartwrenching path.

Deo is fourteen and finds himself faced with a smattering of the biggest and scariest decisions of his life. They’re made even tougher because he shoulders responsibility for Innocent, his twenty-four year old brother who suffered brain trauma at birth.  Armed with only a broken soccer ball and a cereal box, Deo and Innocent set off on a journey. They know their lives are in danger and they need to seek refuge. But they don’t know where they’re going or how they’re going to get there.

Now Is the Time For Running is a hopeful story but it is also a deeply sad and horrifying story. There all sorts of wild and often horrible obstacles encountered by the characters in this story. But there is also a lot of goodness where you’d least expect to find it. Apart from telling a good story, this is one of those novels that might prompt some readers to go and find out more about refugees or even get involved in existing social projects. Or maybe start a new one.  Or just have a little think.

This is a book that could hook readers of soccer fiction. Soccer is a central theme and it provides key turning points in the story. It is also a much loved game in southern Africa. But for those who aren’t football fans, fear not. The story is really about Deo and Innocent’s journey for refuge. And it’s a real pageturner. The last section of the book was my least favourite but it signposted me to a couple of important things I didn’t know about so I am very pleased I read them (I’m not saying what they were because that would be a plot spoiler!). 

I think this fictional story (based on interviews with African refugees) will tug at the hearts and minds of most teenagers, youth workers and many other adults.  I think I should start a new tag for the blog: books that made me cry when I wrote the review.

The book cover warns that it is not suitable for younger readers. There is horrific violence and abuse but it is not graphic and sometimes it is simply inferred.

Publication details:

Tamarind, 2012, London, paperback

This copy: received for review from the publishers

Other reading suggestions:

For younger readers wishing to read fiction that explores issues with similar themes about democracy and refugees, I would point them towards The Other Side of Truth by Beverley Naidoo.

For older readers who are interested in genocide, refugees and human rights, Never Fall Down is the story of a teenage boy living through the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge killings in Cambodia. Never Fall Down is a much starker read than Now Is the Time For Running.

Another teen novel about contemporary Zimbabwe is Jason Wallace’s Out of Shadows. We haven’t read this but it did win the Costa in 2010.

The younger brother caring for an older brother theme also runs through My Brother Simple by Marie Aude-Murail. But that is a very different book.

Review - Never Fall Down

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

Never Fall Down is based on real events that took place in the 1970s. In Cambodia, nearly two million people were killed at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime. Arn Chorn Pond survived and this novel is based on his story.

It starts in 1975. The Khmer Rouge have designated it Year Zero in Cambodia because everything is going to start afresh. Arn is eleven and this story tells the tale of how a young boy took his aunt’s advice and learned how to bend like grass in the wind.

Amidst the manure piles, mango groves, rice, shit, cannibalism, and music that masks death, the reader follows Arn’s story as he learns that some people will do anything to stay alive. The question is, will he? And can he trust anybody – Kha, Siv, Sambo? And Mek - who treats him like a son? And can Runty trust Arn? Whatever happens, many of these characters will become very dear to you.

Have you ever had that feeling when you’ve walked for so long that you don’t think you can go any further? If you have, you might have some mental preparation for this novel.  If you haven’t, prepare yourself first.  Go for a long walk ‘til your feet hurt and you just want to collapse.  But! Never fall down.  Now, steel yourself and you might be ready for this novel….

This is not a happy story but reading it could make you a better person. If it wasn’t for the fact that Arn survives (which you know from the start), this would not be a YA book. The sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll in gritty YA novels doesn’t even compare to scenes in this story. Of course, the distress caused to any reader will not match the distress and deaths suffered by the characters or real people whose history informs this novel.

The language in the book is a bit unusual (Arn probably wasn't a native English speaker) and the narrative and plot is also fairly monotonous for the first half.  And then, chillingly, it changes. I was on tenterhooks the whole way through. There are also moments of light relief. You'll probably even have the occasional chuckle.

A truly absorbing and heartwrenching read, if Never Fall Down makes you burst out with convulsive sobs when you’re standing and waiting on a train platform, don’t blame me for recommending it. Blame the Khmer Rouge.

Publication details:

Random House Children's Publishers, London, 2 August 2012

This copy: manuscript from Random House Children’s Publishers

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Author, Patricia McCormick will be answering some of We Sat Down's questions about Never Fall Down on Tuesday 31st July.  Her answers made me cry so I thoroughly recommend you come back to read them.

Review - The Other Side of Truth

The Other Side of Truth by Beverley Naidoo

The Other Side of Truth by Beverley Naidoo

I am interested in stories about contemporary Africa that are suitable for older children. So when I spotted The Other Side of Truth in the library a couple of weeks back, I picked it up in a shot.  And if you see it in yours, I’d recommend you borrow it too.

The Other Side of Truth by Beverley Naidoo was a Carnegie medal winner in 2000. That meant it was probably well-written but it could also mean that it was full of ‘issues’.  Being Beverley Naidoo, of course there were going to be ‘issues’. Her earlier novel, Journey to Jo’burg had been banned by the South African government during apartheid.  And, yes, The Other Side of Truth tackles very big issues. It deals with political murder, smuggling, racism, bullying and political asylum in the UK – and it does it sensitively and very well.

The Other Side of Truth literally starts with a bang in Nigeria and it swiftly moves on to London. It tells the story of two Nigerian children, Sade (12) and Femi (10), who find themselves caught up in a growing web of lies in a strange country without their parents after their mother is killed in Nigeria. Sade is tormented by these lies because her mother had always taught her how important honesty was.  Now, Sade finds that being honest isn’t always so easy when there are life or death issues at stake.

The story is written as a bit of an adventure but deals with the real life issues of asylum seekers. Sade especially proves herself to be a worthy heroine as she holds herself responsible for ensuring their father's safety - even at her and Femi's expense. 

Most readers will warm to Sade and Femi immediately because these characters find themselves in really awful and heartwrenching situations more than once.  Will it ever get better for them? Despite the big issues that this book takes on, it is an easy read.  What I particularly liked about this story was that there are some really nice adult characters too. It is a very hopeful story and I highly recommend it. If I had a list of ‘best books for children/teens’, this would be on it.

Publication details:

2000, Puffin, London, paperback

This copy: borrowed from public library

Review - Secrets of the Henna Girl

Secrets of the Henna Girl by Sufiya Ahmed

Secrets of the Henna Girl -Sufiya Ahmed

Straight off, I’ll say that Secrets of the Henna Girl is a book that I think all teen girls should read.  And then pass it on to their brothers, friends, mothers and fathers.  It’s hardhitting realist fiction without the grit. Charmingly, it reads like a sunshine-laced thriller.

Picture this.  You’re sixteen years old. You’ve finished your GCSEs. You’re having fun with your friends and you’re brimming with anticipation and excitement for what college and your future holds. That is Zeba Khan’s life – and she’s happy.  

But in a flash, without warning, this is all wrenched from her. A family holiday to Pakistan and the announcement of what will be a forced marriage snatches everything from Zeba. And she is scared, scared, scared that her parents are going to let this to happen to her. How could her father do this?!!!

From here on, Secrets of the Henna Girl starts to read like a tense thriller: a couple of teenage girls have been trapped, virtually imprisoned and they’re in real danger if they try to escape. But they’re also in danger of losing their freedom (or even their health) if they don’t escape. And for anyone who tries to help them – well…..!!! This story will have you on tenterhooks the whole way through as Zeba deals with family betrayal, loneliness, entrapment, imprisonment, complicated friendships, honour, death, and guilt.

Amidst the tension, there are also some truly individual and inspirational women characters: Zeba’s Nannyma, Zehar, Farhat and Nusrat-kala. For all the seriousness of the novel, these characters fill the story with the beautiful warmth that the book's cover conveys.  And they will have you quietly chuckling too.

Without a doubt, this is an ‘issues’ novel tackling the problems of forced marriage and honour. The novel makes it clear that forced marriage is illegal in the eyes of Islam and that it is a human’s rights abuse under the terms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  It also explores the myths that bond religion with tradition and highlights the impossible situation of having to choose between self and family honour. 

Above all, Secrets of the Henna Girl urges people to have courage in standing up for their individual rights and the rights of others – including women and girls!

Publication details:

Puffin, 2012, London, paperback

This copy: uncorrected proof sent by Puffin

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Come back here this Friday 15 June when Sufiya Ahmed answers questions about forced marriages and other important issues that her book raises.