Classics Club

It's got to that time when planning for the next year for a lot of us is already well underway. And in the book blogging world, sign-ups for reading challenges start appearing.

One that has caught my eye, and can be signed up to at any time is the Classics Club. Over the summer, we had a family adventure reading some of the children's classics from Vintage. We enjoyed that and it spurred all sorts of discussions. We also just received a copy of The Ultimate Teen Book Guide (thanks YA Library UK) which includes recommendations for all sorts of classic books, some teen, some children's and some adult.

The Classics Club challenge is a big one and it's longitudinal: 50 classics over 5 years - and you need to start off with a proposed list of 50 books.

Because our blog has always tried to focus on sharing and discussion in reading, we thought that this would be perfect for us, so both  myself and Little M are signing up for it. It will be fascinating to see whether our reading lists diverge - or whether we both read the same 50!

We'll likely start this in the new year so we're setting out goal end date as 31 December 2017.

The club leaves the definition of 'classic' open. We'll start off by defining it for ourselves as books that publishers have deemed 'classic' or books that have passed among generations of readers. Our We Sat Down 50 Classics Club reading list includes some books that will be rereads for M and some brand new reads for both M & Little M. Some of the books have been chosen because they are already on our bookshelves! New additions and progress will be posted as time goes on.

1. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
2. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (on our shelf)
3. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - Joan Aiken (on our shelf)
4. Emil and the Detectives - Erich Kastner (on our shelf)
5. Black Beauty - Anna Sewell (on our shelf)
6. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier (M's re-read)
7. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (on our shelf; M's re-read)
8. The Little Prince - Antione de Saint-Exupery
9. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (M's re-read)
10. My Friend Flicka - Mary O'Hara (on our shelf; M's re-read)
11. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne
12. A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula le Guin (M's re-read)
13. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (M's re-read)
14. A Dream of Sadlers Wells - Lorna Hill (on our shelf; M's re-read)
15. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4 - Sue Townsend
16. Franny and Zooey - JD Salinger
17. The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (on our shelf; M's re-read)
18. The Chocolate War - Robert Cormier (M's re-read; on our shelf)
19. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee (on our shelf; M's re-read)
20. Tamar - Mal Peet
21.  Discworld: Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett
22. The Color Purple - Alice Walker (on our shelf; M's re-read)
23. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (on our shelf; M's re-read)
24. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
25. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (on our shelf)
26. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou (on our shelf)
27. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
28. The Trial - Franz Kafka (on our shelf)
29. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
30. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
31. East of Eden - John Steinbeck (M's re-read)
32. Waiting For Godot - Samuel Beckett (M's re-read)
33. My Name is Red - Orhan Pamuk (on our shelf)
34. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco (on our shelf)
35. The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli
36. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
37. The Story of an African Farm - Olive Schreiner
38. My Antonia - Cather Willa
39. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
40. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera (on our shelf; M's re-read)
41. Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates (on our shelf)
42. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
43. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
44. Ulysses - James Joyce (on our shelf)
45. The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch (on our shelf)
46. The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
47. Hamlet - William Shakespeare (M's re-read)
48. Othello - William Shakespeare (M's re-read)
49. Travel Light - Naomi Mitchison
50. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
51. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell (on our shelf; M's re-read)

If you're wondering why there is 51, that's because there was a small typing error which meant that no.51 was originally not numbered!

Write Your Own Creepy Christmas

No review, no booklists, no reading discussions, no interviews today. No. It's all about Christmas and writing.....

To celebrate the launch of Chris Priestley's new e-book, Christmas Tales of Terror, Bloomsbury's short story writing competition blog, 247 Tales, is running a special Christmas story competition for writers aged 10 - 16.  All you have to do is write a frightful festive story in 247 words - or less. And submit it by Wednesday 12th December. There's a prize too. Full entry details are on the 247 Tales blog.

To give you some idea of how it's done, here's a specially crafted 247 tale written by author Chris Priestley:

That end of the park was empty and Lilian’s footsteps were the only ones to trouble the pristine blanket of pure white snow.  It was so beautiful, so magical.  She was breathless with excitement and, looking back only once at her now distant friends, walked on.

Lillian’s neat and charmless park was utterly transformed.  The grim old archway that stood as a lone reminder of the workhouse that had once stood here was smothered in snow and feathery snowflakes fell and tickled her face.  Lilian stepped through the arch as though stepping into another world. 

 
The park was unrecognisable here.  Lilian felt she was walking through a deserted wood as she reached an area thick with trees where the snow was especially deep and her whispered footfalls were the only sound. She had never thought of the children who lived and died in the workhouse but now they came unbidden into her thoughts.  She even thought she could hear them whispering.

Then looking up she saw children sitting in the branches above her head.  They looked like roosting owls.  They were ragged children, poorly dressed and pale, eerily lit from below by bright snow.  Their thin, wan faces looked down at her with large eyes twinkling in the snow light.  They bore an expression she thought at first was one of tragic longing, but which she realised too late was in reality some kind of terrible and cruel hunger.

And, before she could even scream, they jumped.

Chris Priestley, (247 words)

 

 

******

Good luck!

The Weight of Water - M's review

The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan

 

The Weight of Water has been nominated for the 2013 Carnegie medal. It is a quick and enchanting read, and I really can’t recommend it highly enough. I read it a few weeks back, made some notes and now....I actually can't fault it. Amazing.

The Weight of Water tells a contemporary tale about twelve year old Kasienka. She travels with her mother from Poland to England. They are in search of her father and have little money. The unwinding story is a familiar bildungsroman of a twelve year old immigrant who is the new girl in school trying to understand and form her own identity. Within this story, the main plot with its heavy themes of bullying, loss and immigration are lightly buoyed  by the sweet-and-scary joys of pursuing  interests, love and the prospects of newfound  happiness.

What makes this story truly beautiful though, is the way it is told. The Weight of Water consists of a set of poems. Its form takes a poetic shape but uses narrative prose to great effect. At first, I was alarmed when I saw the unfamiliar shape of poetry lines in the pages of this novel rather than the familiar chunks of paragraphs. But, the writing has a beguiling rhythm which adds a simple but beautiful flow to what is an easy story to follow. It is an engrossing story that you’ll read easily in a single sitting. Or in little bits if that’s what you prefer.

The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan

Here are some of my further thoughts about the book in relation to the Carnegie shadowing criteria that we're using:

My first impression of Kasienka was that she was a good girl who felt loved and loved her family – although she felt terrible that her dad had left them. She seemed like a pleasant child who tried hard and was content. The descriptions of Kasienka’s thoughts, looks, behaviour are all very plausible and aspects of them are likely to be familiar to most people, especially twelve year old but nearly thirteen year olds girls.

Many of the main characters change as the novel progresses. While the plot is important and strong, the main focus is on how the main characters in this novel, Kasienka and her mother, adapt to their changing environment and relationships in England.

Kasienka has important relationships with a number of adults and students at school. Some of these relationships are positive and supportive, others are more negative. Many of these relationships change.

Despite the poetry, the language (vocabulary and syntax) is straightforward. The story dives straight in with Kasienka and her mother leaving Poland with just an old suitcase and a laundry bag. From the first page, you know already that this change in their life is not going to be easy.

The Weight of Water is told from Kasienka’s point of view. There is very little dialogue with other characters but there is a lot of internal dialogue. There is also a lot of description which helps to fill in the details of the story and to create an atmosphere of passing time and change. However, Crossan does not linger on irrelevant detail and the story moves swiftly, flitting past that which is not integral to the main developments of the character and plot.

The main plot about Kasienka and her mother's move to England in search of her father is well-supported and enhanced by the interweaved sub-plots. For me, it is the sub-plot around developing personal identity which are the highlight of this story.

 

This book definitely stays with you after you have finished it. You know where you finish the last page and just sit staring......and wondering what happens next in the characters' lives? And then wish you could quickly find someone else who has read it so you can talk about it with them? Yes, it was like that for me.

This book would probably fit into a contemporary genre because it is set in current times and is realistic (but you might also find it on the poetry shelves).

I would recommend this novel to readers approximately 11+ and think that it could have a broad appeal to a variety of readers.

 

 

Publication details:

Bloomsbury, January 2012, London, hardback

 

This copy: received for Carnegie reviewing from the publisher

 

Pippi Longstocking - M's Review

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

 

If you have never met her before in your life, let me introduce you to a nine year old thing-searcher called Pippilotta Comestibles Windowshade Curlymint Ephraimsdaughter Longstocking, more commonly known as Pippi. The locals think she lives alone but she doesn’t: she lives with Mr Nilsson (who’s a monkey) and a horse in a house in Sweden.



Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

The first book, Pippi Longstocking, tells about her moving into Villa Villekulla, settling into the town and establishing herself as the super-strongest and most remarkable girl who is quite capable of dealing with the worst of the town bullies in the most non-violent way.  She sees things differently to other people and her neighbours, Annika and Tommy are quite taken in by her – as am I. But boy, can that girl lie!

Underneath the rollicking good fun of the stories, Astrid Lindgren’s  Pippi stories also raise more complex issues like whether children (like Pippi) should live on their own in a house or whether they should go into a children’s home; should they be educated in a school or can life provide them with another sort of education; and of course, what is hygiene and the best way of walking? And is the best thing about school the holidays?

Each chapter is a semi-adventure with Pippi and as such, it’s not really a very linear narrative with a strong storyline. It is an easy and fun chapter book for young independent readers and it would also make for wonderful bedtime or family reading. I’d also be tempted to go all out and read it in conjunction with a copy of something like Keri Smith’s How To Be An Explorer of the World (which is a non-fiction activity journal good for kids of all grown-up or grown-down ages).

I don’t think I ever read Pippi Longstocking as a child but I watched and loved the television series (a dubbed version). She was one of my all-time favourite characters because she thought and did some very unexpected and wildly cool things.

I was properly introduced to Astrid Lindgren's writing and the Pippi books by the funny and interesting Alaric Hall, a lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Leeds University (note: Pippi is not an example of medieval literature). He has a personal interest in Scandinavian children’s literature (think Pippi, Moomins and Hans Christian Andersen).

If you haven’t read any Pippi, I urge you to do so. Likewise, if you ever get the chance to meet Alaric Hall, I urge you to do so. In his own special way, he is as vibrant and enigmatic as Pippi.

Alaric Hall, image courtesy of Leeds University

 

Publication details:

Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012 edition, paperback

 This copy: received for review from the publisher

 

OUP has republished two more of the Pippi books in a paperback edition: Pippi in the South Seas and Pippi Goes Abroad. In these books, the adventures of Pippi, Annika and Tommy continue. There is also a beautiful hardback edition with illustrations by Lauren Child.

Dash & Lily's Book of Dares - M's review

Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

I have saved this review especially to kickstart December!!!! It's a cheesy, fun-filled, romantic, Christmas read.

 

Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares is about a red Moleskine notebook that is found by a snarly-looking sixteen/seventeen year old boy in a New York bookstore alongside the JD Salinger titles. Good start. It has clues in it that send him on a bit of a goosechase to find Lily, the ‘writer’ of the first few clues. And it’s Christmastime – December 21^st.

The first two chapters are really very promising, alternating between Dash and Lily’s story. Their voices are truly distinct, which is wonderful and either down to the good writing of the individual authors or clever writing by having different authors take on each voice (as they claim to have done in this case). But then, the cat and mouse type chase becomes a bit Christmas-movie-cheesy. And then the story interest picks up again, descends into sit-com cheese again, and so on.

But I stayed with it because I wanted to know what happens. Do Dash & Lily meet? Do they want to get together? And (I can’t believe it is me writing this), will anybody (other than the boys!) kiss??

The writing style will appeal to fans of John Green. Apart from removing some of the cheese, my main gripe with this book is that I wish I'd waited ‘til 21 December to read it (now who’s being cheesy?)! Anyone who likes a little bit of festive, light romance, read this novel in December - and have some fun. Who knows, we might all find little red notebooks with messages popping up around the place. Now that would be dashing!

This novel made me feel all light and cheery (and that has nothing to do with the way the story goes but it does have a lot to do with some of its details), so at the start of December, here's wishing you all a very merry Christmas season.

Who'll be dashing through the snow.......?



Publication details:

MIRA Books, October 2012, Surrey, UK, paperback

This copy: received for review from the publisher

 

A Sea of Stars - Little M's Review

A Sea of Stars by Kate Maryon

A Sea of Stars - Kate Maryon

A Sea of Stars is about a family who adopt a 10 year old girl called Cat. Cat’s real mother can barely look after herself, let alone Cat and her brother. Maya on the other hand, the daughter of the family who adopts Cat, is not allowed to surf on her own without a friend or an adult. This is all because of her little brother’s death but when Maya finds out they are adopting Cat she becomes more excited.  Cat tries to fit in but she can’t forget the fact that her brother is at a different home because the social workers wanted to split them up. As Maya and Cat live together they realise how similar they are. Is Cat going to accept the fact that they are her new family? And is Maya going to be allowed to surf on her own?

I have read many books so far but none have had much to do with surfing. I really like this book because I thought the ending was put together nicely. I now realise how different the Jacqueline Wilson Tracy Beaker books are to this one. It’s so different because in Tracy Beaker most of the kids want to be adopted, but in this one Cat didn’t want to be. 

After reading this I really want to read Shine, Glitter and A Million Angels by Kate Maryon.

I think people who like surfing, books where a child is being adopted or maybe people who like Tracy Beaker will like this book. If I had to give an age rating I would probably say around nine or ten plus because some younger kids might not be reading at that level yet. But it depends on their capability.

 

Publication details: 2012, Harper Collins, London, paperback

This copy:  received for review from the publisher.

 

Lauren St John chat & giveaway

One of Little M's favourite authors - on our blog!!!

 

Rushing to finish two books (yes, the next Laura Marlin series and the sequel to The One Dollar Horse), we’re delighted that author Lauren St John managed to squeeze in some time for Little M before rushing off to a writing residency at a boarding school!

 

Little M: What was it like to grow up in Zimbabwe?

Lauren: It's one of the most beautiful countries in the world and it was incredible to grow up surrounded by nature, but I also grew up in a war so I spent quite a bit of my childhood knowing I could die at any time.

Little M: Did you ever have a white giraffe?

Lauren: I didn't have a white giraffe but I did have a pet giraffe called Jenny. When I was 11 we moved to a farm called Rainbow's End, which had a 100-acre private game reserve on it. We had impala, wildebeest, warthogs, monkeys, ostriches and Jenny. It's quite amazing to wake up in the morning and look out of the window and see a giraffe at the bottom of your garden.

Little M: Have you ever ridden a giraffe?

Lauren: I've never ridden a giraffe and I don't think anyone ever has. It's too far to fall!

Little M: Have you ever been on an investigation, like in the Laura Marlin stories?

Lauren: I've done a lot of investigations for The Sunday Times and I love it. It is sort of like being a detective. I did one on spies, which was great fun, and another into dolphin trafficking, which was quite scary because it involved the Russian and Ukrainian mafia.

Little M: Do/did you have a horse or do you just ride?

Lauren: We had eight horses when I was growing up, but now I just ride when I can. I'd love a horse.

Lauren St John


UK Giveaway - The One Dollar Horse

We have 2 copies of The One Dollar Horse to giveaway!
The One Dollar Horse is an adventure story about Casey, whose dream is to win at the Badminton Horse Trials.

To enter:

Please leave a comment on this blog post 

OR

e-mail us: wesatdown2  @  gmail  .  com
using the subject line ONE DOLLAR HORSE

OR

Tweet us: @wesatdown
Using hashtag #onedollarhorse

Rules:

1. This giveaway closes at 5pm on Monday 3rd December 2012.

2. Two winners will be chosen at random.

3. Winners will be contacted for their postal addresses. Prizes can only be delivered to UK addresses. 

4. If you are younger than 13, please get a parent/guardian's permission to enter.

5. This giveaway is sponsored by the publisher, Orion Children's Books.

 

 

Best of luck!

 

 

Hold On - M's review

Hold On by Alan Gibbons

 

Because of the issues Hold On explores, this review has been written in support of Anti-Bullying Week.

John Sorrel is dead and Annie knows who his killers are and she wants them to pay. She’s been away in Canada but now she’s back and she knows what happened because John had been e-mailing her. She’s found his diary too and she’s so sure that she knows what happened and why – but is she right? And what is she going to do about it? Will that make things any better for anyone?

Hold On - Alan Gibbons

Hold On explores the complex issues surrounding teen suicide, bullying, portioning blame, seeking answers and loyal friendship. It tackles these issues from the perspectives of the person being bullied, John, the school bullies and the people who John left behind – especially Annie.

Any novel about teen suicide is always going to be chilling and this one is no different. However, Hold On also conveys messages of hope for a different outcome for people who are involved in bullying either as the victim, the bully, or an onlooker. The loudest one is ‘speak out’. Don’t bottle things up, don’t try to be the tough guy on your own, and don’t shy away from the truth because you’re afraid. Also, don’t be afraid to change. I imagine most people will identify with some aspects of this story and may find that either comforting or a wake-up call.

Small quibble, but I occasionally got a bit muddled about the timeframes in the story – but it does all come together and you can figure it out easily enough. Also, the eight year olds in this novel sounded years older than any eight year olds I’ve met.

While it is an issues novel, Hold On is also a quick read with a compelling storyline and a couple of twists and turns. It deals with heavy issues in a forthright but sensitive way. The interest level might be more suited to secondary school readers but the writing is accessible to younger readers too.

  

Publication details:

This novel was originally published in 2005.

This edition: Indigo, 2012 edition, London, paperback

This copy: received for review from the publisher

Carnegie 2013: Shadowing the Longlist

We follow the Carnegie awards with great interest partly because their lists are one of the places we look to for reading inspiration, we often buy books that make the shortlist and also because it's fun. We were obviously delighted then when we won a whole bundle of books that were on the Carnegie 2013 longlist from Random House Children's Publishers. I spent a lunchtime thumbing through these books to see what I thought.Three of them I'd already read and thoroughly enjoyed and my hunch is that at least one of them will make the shortlist (if not win).

Last year, Little M had been involved with shadowing the shortlist at school, but they started late and didn't get very far with it. So, I had a think and, because we have a couple of guest reviewers, voila, We Sat Down has signed up on the Carnegie's official Shadowing Site. We're planning on 'shadowing' the whole of the Carnegie Longlist. We'll be blogging about it on here too, right up until June 2013 when the winner is announced.

Random House Children's Publishers' Carnegie 2013 Longlist

 

By 'shadowing', we don't promise to read and review every single book. By my count, that'd be 68 and not every one will be to our taste. What we mean is that we'll read and review a great deal of them, but we will have some fun and explorations with each and every single title on the Carnegie 2013 longlist. Because we're not the Carnegie judges, we might occasionally apply our own criteria to the books (but we'll let you know if we do that!).

We'd love to make a really big shadow (although ours will be a shadow of sunshine because we're not going to block out any light nor warmth). So, if anyone is interested in joining us, please get in touch. You can join in by commenting on any of our blog posts that are tagged with Carnegie2013. You can join in by reading or exploring one of the books. We'll have other specific ways to get involved as we go along too.

So to start it all off, which books on the list have you read? Which book would you like to read next?

Here is a list of all the books on the Carnegie 2013 longlist:

Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner (Hot Key Books)

 

The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket by John Boyne (Doubleday Children's Books)

After the Snow by S.D. Crockett (Macmillan Children's Books)

All Fall Down by Sally Nicholls (Marion Lloyd Books)

Wonder by R.J. Palacio (Bodley Head)

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (Electric Monkey)

The Seeing by Diana Hendry (Bodley Head)

Hitler's Angel by William Osborne (Chicken House)

This is Not Forgiveness by Celia Rees (Bloomsbury)

The Broken Road by B.R. Collins (Bloomsbury)

Jasmine Skies by Sita Brahmachari (Macmillan Children's Books)

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick (Indigo)

Saving Daisy by Phil Earle (Puffin Books)

Dying To Know You by Aidan Chambers (Bodley Head)

Spy For The Queen of Scots by Theresa Breslin (Doubleday Children's Books)

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (Doubleday Children's Books)

The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan (David Fickling Books)

This Dark Endeavour by Kenneth Oppel (Random House David Fickling Books)

Black Arts: The Books of Pandemonium by Andrew Prentice and Jonathan Weil (David Fickling Books)

A Boy and a Bear in a Boat by Dave Shelton (David Fickling Books)

Itch by Simon Mayo (Corgi Children's Books)

To Be A Cat by Matt Haig (Bodley Head)

Trouble in Toadpool by Anne Fine (Doubleday Children's Books)
Soldier Dog by Sam Angus (Macmillan Children's Books)

VIII by H.M. Castor (Templar Publishing)

A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan Children's Books)

A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle (Marion Lloyd Books)

The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan (Bloomsbury)

The Double Shadow by Sally Gardner (Indigo)

The Unforgotten Coat by Frank Cottrell Boyce (Walker Books)

Call Down Thunder by Daniel Finn (Macmillan Children's Books)

15 Days Without a Head by Dave Cousins (Oxford University Press)

The Prince Who Walked With Lions by Elizabeth Laird (Macmillan Children's Books)

Black Heart Blue by Louisa Reid (Puffin Books)

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater (Scholastic)

A Skull in Shadows Lane by Robert Swindells (Corgi Children's Books)

The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean by David Almond (Puffin Books)

A Waste of Good Paper by Sean Taylor (Frances Lincoln Children's Books)

In Darkness by Nick Lake (Bloomsbury)

Sektion 20 by Paul Dowswell (Bloomsbury)

Mortal Chaos by Matt Dickinson (Oxford University Press)

At Yellow Lake by Jane McLoughlin (Frances Lincoln Children's Books)

Unrest by Michelle Harrison (Simon & Schuster Children's Books)

The Things We Did For Love by Natasha Farrant (Faber and Faber)

Naked by Kevin Brooks (Puffin Books)

The Traitors by Tom Becker (Scholastic)

Dead Time by Anne Cassidy (Bloomsbury)

The Apothecary by Maile Meloy (Andersen Press)

The Treasure House by Linda Newbery (Orion Children's Books)

Gods and Warriors by Michelle Paver (Puffin Books)

After by Morris Gleitzman (Puffin Books)

Burn Mark by Laura Powell (Bloomsbury)

The Girl in the Mask by Marie-Louise Jensen (Oxford University Press)

Hero on a Bicycle by Shirley Hughes (Walker Books)

Pendragon Legacy: Sword of Light by Katherine Roberts (Templar Publishing)

Scramasax by Kevin Crossley-Holland (Quercus Publishing)

Daylight Saving by Edward Hogan (Walker Books)

Kill All Enemies by Melvin Burgess (Puffin Books)

Mister Creecher by Chris Priestley (Bloomsbury)

The Flask by Nicky Singer (HarperCollins Children's Books)

Buzzing! by Anneliese Emmans Dean (Brambleby Books)

Far Rockaway by Charlie Fletcher (Hodder Children's Books)

The Abominables by Eva Ibbotson (Marion Lloyd Books)

 

Skulduggery Pleasant: Death Bringer by Derek Landy (HarperCollins Children's Books)

Goblins by Philip Reeve (Marion Lloyd Books)

The Sleeping Army by Francesca Simon (Profile Books)

Goldilocks on CCTV by John Agard (Frances Lincoln Children's Books)

The No. 1 Car Spotter and the Firebird by Atinuke (Walker Books)

 

To find out more about shadowing, have a look at the Carnegie Shadowing Site.

Here is a link to the We Sat Down Shadowing Page.

Pigeon English - M's review

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

Due to the themes and content of this novel, this review has been deliberately selected by me to run during Anti-Bullying Week.

 

Previously shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, Pigeon English really is not a heavy, wade-through-me novel.  It’s pacy and simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking.  

Harri is in Year 7 and has recently moved from Ghana with his mother and sister. They are living on a rough council estate in London. Harri tells a story about what happens when a boy from their area is found stabbed to death and he and his friend decide to become ‘detectives’.  Through Harri’s ‘whodunit’ detective story, Pigeon English explores what life is like for children trying to make a life for themselves in the London ganglands.

At first, I thought the title Pigeon English was mainly going to be a play on words, pidgin English, seeing as Harri is from Ghana.  In one way it is, as throughout the story Harri explains what he thinks the new words, rules and slang he’s picked up mean. Many of these will make you chuckle and many will elicit other emotions too.  Some of it is a bit of a pidgin mix up. Harri got me too – for a long while, when Harri said ‘Asweh,’ I thought Asweh was some kind of ancestral god (I swear, I’m such a sucker)! And his sister, Lydia, was funny by always reprimanding Harri and reminding him to ‘advise yourself”!

But there is also an actual pigeon in the novel. This pigeon flies into Harri’s London flat one day, and also acts as his guardian. For me, the pigeon as guardian provides a foreboding warning to the reader about where the plot is going. You might be chuckling away at Harri’s innocence but the pigeon reminds you that this story is really about violent bullying.



Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

Harri is a delightful narrator and character. Deep down he’s a really good boy and for most readers, he’s likely to melt your hearts.  It’s the little things he does. Like he thinks people should tell the estate gangs the secret that gangs can also do good, helpful missions, not just harmful ones. And his hand-drawn lines on his plain trainers to make them look like the cool brand ones.

As with most child narrators, Harri’s observations, thoughts and recounts, shed light on the many different prejudices that people carry around in their heads and throw about in their words and sometimes actions too.

Pigeon English is also a murder mystery, a whodunit story and in this way joins some other wonderful novels for teens like The CuriousIncident of the Dog In the Night-Time by Mark Haddon and The Night Sky In MyHead by Sarah Hammond.

 

Harri’s story is a chilling one. While it was not written or first published as a YA novel, in comparison to some other YA novels that take on gritty urban issues, for me, Pigeon English sings and soars above them. There are some nasty characters in this novel but the author, through Harri, softens them and makes them more palatable to read about than some other novels achieve, such as This Is Not Forgiveness by Celia Rees or Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses sequence. Shocking as the story in Pigeon English is, it doesn’t aim for a ‘shock factor’. I’d even go so far as to say that while it dishes dirt, it takes the grit out. For me, that’s what gives it wings.

This new edition is published for the YA market and has guidance on the back: Parental Advisory: Explicit Content. Yes, there is some explicit content in this novel mostly involving knives, tongues and fingers - all told from eleven year old Harri’s perspective. Definitely one for the older teens (and obviously adults) but I think a lot of young teens could (and maybe should) get their heads around it too. Strong hearts needed. Perhaps tissues too.  This is a novel worth keeping.

 

Publication details:

Bloomsbury, October 2012 edition, London, paperback
 
This copy: received for review from the publisher