Happiness Seeker by Jennifer Burkinshaw

2023 

Allie goes on a school trip to Grange-Over-Sands with its fast moving tide and quicksands can be a treacherous place. She is there with her classmates and two of their teachers. Some students including Allie are working on plays they are writing.  Others are studying the geography of the area.

There are all the normal issues that teens such as these face; Finn is her best friend but he is also on intimate terms with Allie’s nemesis Courtney.

Allie meets Maren who knows Morecombe Bay well   - he is involved in modern slavery and has to collect cockles illegally.  We have a little romance here.

Allie tries to help by reporting the illegal traders to the authorities but it is too late for Maren; they get wind of what is going on and flee.  

Courtney misunderstands Maren and makes a bad decision about him. She realises her mistake and tries to make amends but this involves her and Finn crossing the sands. And Courtney gets stuck.  There is then a race against time. Allie stays with Courtney whilst Maren and Flinn go in opposite directions to find help. Finn does not make it, despite being a strong swimmer.

Help comes for the two girls; they both survive.  

Maren disappears.

This is a very well written novel which will engage the reader emotionally. Jennifer Burkinshaw also provides maps and photos of the setting.              

Mermaid Academy, Cora and Sparkle, by Julie Sykes and Linda Chapman

 

2023 

The Mermaid Academy is in many ways like any other school. Students learn and friendships are important. There are challenges. Cora and Issy are twins but are forced to attend different classes.  Issy is the older twin and Cora is worried when her magic appears before Issy’s. Cora’s closest companion is Sparkle, her dolphin.

There is also adventure and mystery.  Cora and Sparkle seek to join Cora’s friends who are trying to work out what has damaged the coral reefs. This brings them into danger as well. They discover the terrible secret about what has been happening.

All is well in the end. Issy and Cora are reconciled.   When dolphins and mermaids bond their tail fins match.  This happens for Cora and Sparkle at the end of the story.  Cora is also reconciled with her twin sister and at peace with her friends. Then she decides to do what she had always really wanted to to do:  she joins the music group. Her friends, her twin and Sparkle are all happy about this.

The book is 107 pages long. It has a blocked text and uses a serif font with difficult ‘a’s and ‘g’s. It is, however, double- spaced. Monochrome illustrative pictures are integrated into the text from time to time.  Each chapter heading has a decorative border.  

This is part of The Mermaid Academy Series 

Find your copy here  

Note, this is an affiliate link and a small portion of what you pay, at no extra cost to you,  may go to Bridge House Publishing.  

Always There For You by Miriam Halahmy

2019 

Holly is forced to spend a long time on her own, her parents are occupied with looking after her grandmother, her best friend Amy has gone to live in Canada.  She doesn’t fit in all that well at school; she isn’t part of the in-crowd but neither does she feel comfortable with needy Noah and animal-lovers Tim and Ellen.

Then she meets Jay in an online chat group. Their mantra becomes “Always there for you”. She arranges to see Jay and finds he is older than she thought.  He said he was fifteen but now confesses to being nineteen.  We eventually find out he is twenty-six.  He is a paedophile and has been grooming several young girls.   It all comes to a head when he makes Holly take a photo of herself in a bikini, photoshops  that picture and threatens to put it up on the internet if she doesn’t sleep with him.

He is taken to court, found guilty and imprisoned. However, it takes a while for the trial to take place and Holly has to live with the fact that she could bump into him at any time. During the trial, where she appears by video link, the defence barrister makes her feel that it was all her fault.

This it clearly an important topic.

The author gives us a note about internet safety at the end of the book.

There are 282 pages of blocked text with an adult font.  

This is a thought-provoking book for the young reader. It offers a stark warning. It clearly demonstrates how easily Holly is taken in.   

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

 

2017

This tackles many themes that interest the target reader.  John Green presents us with death, cancer, depression, grief, family relationships, peer relationships and some mild peer pressure. Green also explores the notion of fiction, both in his notes within the book and in the character of Peter Van Houten, a drunk and an egoist who has at one time been a writer. 

Importantly, Green encourages us to look at those who suffer from cancer as whole people, not just as victims of a disease.  These need not necessarily be nice people. 

Nice or not, the characters are richly drawn. As we have come to expect from Green, the characters are rounded and believable. Hazel narrates the story and has been given a convincing and consistent voice.      

       

The growth in protagonist Hazel is mild and somewhat negative though we also have plenty of positives:  love, romance, gentle sex and for some, survival.   

The book is some 316 pages long so has a respectable spine. The text s blocked and a serif font, with difficult  ‘a’s and ‘g’s is used.  A bordering on adult readership is further confirmed by quit demanding language and much abstract, philosophical thought.  This edition was published in 2017. The novel was first published in 2012.        
      

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

 

2015 

The monster in the title takes many forms. It is an ancient spirit in a Yew tree, a nightmare, cancer, death, illness, humanity, a caring grandmother, an almost always absent father, a group of bullies and the protagonist himself, Conor.

The concept was created by Siobhan Dowd, but sadly she died of breast cancer before she could start writing. The task was taken on by Patrick Ness but he made no attempt to replicate Dowd's voice.   

    

This is a brave novel. It tackles many young adult themes – peer pressure, family relationships, bullying and school. There is a touch of the paranormal too in the story. It also brings us face-to-face with death and illness; some of the descriptions of Conor's mother's illness are quite graphic. 

Conor is not altogether likeable yet Ness manages to make us empathise with him. 

In the end, it is up to the reader to decide exactly who or what the monster is.  For sure, it brings some wisdom and poses many questions.                     

Mates, Dates and Pullling Power by Cathy Hopkins

                                                  

 2003 

There are several books written for teens that resemble chick-lit but are written for younger women. I like to call these chicklet-lit. There is  also what might be called “staglet-lit” literature which has a male focus. These books are characterised by lots of parties, interest in other sexes, and fun with peers. Yet there is also peer pressure and on the whole these texts are slightly more serious than their adult counterparts. Cathy Hopkins Mates Dates series offers us plenty of examples. 

In the opening scene of Mates, Dates and Pulling Power (Hopkins 2003) the girls are together and “We were covered in some homemade gloop that Lucy and Izzie had concocted in the kitchen and were discussing the local boy talent in North London” (2). Much of their chatter is about boys. 

The girls are generally lighthearted. One of their father’s is a university lecturer and recommends books to his daughter. But Nesta, our protagonist, says “Not my cup of tea at all, I’d rather watch a good soap on telly” (7). Retail therapy is an option: Netsa buys new underwear when she is annoyed about having a brace on her teeth. Her friend questions this. She replies: ”Distraction …. Obvious, isn't it?” (62). They don't take themselves too seriously. “’Yeah, bugger unrequited love and passion,” said Lucy. “Chocolate never lets you down” 968).   

Nesta isn’t all that ordinary; her father is  a film director and her mother is a TV announcer. Dad is also partly Italian (21-22). Yet her mother’s hours are cut and when Netsa asks to join an acting class that will cot £5.00 a week her mother says that they can’t afford it. She takes a job stacking shelves to raise the money.  He father confirms that this is a good move: “he says that loads of movie stars  start out working in dead end jobs, so that they can pay their way before they make their  big break” (48).  

 
There is humour. Nesta visits the dentist. The dentist asks her a question. She replies: “‘Urg, argle, oof,’ I attempted to say. I mean how ridiculous? Asking people questions when they’re lying on their backs with their mouths full of fingers,” (28-29). Later she is not amused; the dentist recommends that she  wears a brace. She exaggerates on the day the brace is fitted:” I emerged form the orthodontist’s looking to the world like a normal teenager, but inside I was a wounded soul cut down in the prime of my life (35). 

Also, when she invites Luke for a meal she switches the grill on instead of the oven, she takes creamed fish out of the freezer instead of vanilla ice cream and finally sets fire to her hair with a candle (Chapter 8).  

The book is peppered with good advice for teen girls. The advice isn’t totally impractical and may give hope. This includes: recipes for face masks, explanation of the meanings of difficult words, how to fit a bra, visualisation / affirmation exercises and a recipe for pesto.    

    
The peer pressure is there from page 4. Our protagonist reminisces about her former boyfriend but her thoughts are really more aobut her girlfriends. “Maybe they thought I only dated him because he was loaded. I decided to find out what they really thought about me in a really subtle way”(4). There is also peer support: after she has the dreaded brace fitted her friends rally round (Chapter 4).   

There is is a distinct dark side to this novel. Nesta’s dad reacts strangely to Luke. There is  history between his family and Luke’s. He bans Nesta from seeing Luke ( Chapter 9). We learn in Chapter 13 that Nesta’s father blames Luke’s father for his sister’s death. She was killed when a drunken driver ran into the car she was driving. Luke’s dad had let her drive when she had only just passed her test. Netsa has grand ideas of staging a reconciliation between the two Italian men. It doesn’t  quite go according to plan. Luke’s father takes over and the reconciliation happens after all. 

Though this novel has its darker side but it has a feel-good ending. There is also some wisdom as Nesta realises there is room for garlic and for roses in the world (Chapter 16).         

The book is 169 pages in blocked text and a simple font. 

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

2014, first published 1974  

The story is set in a Catholic boys’ school. In the introduction to this edition Robert Cormier describes tis as “a metaphor for the world” (vii).  Certainly he offers the reader much to think about in how power shifts within society. The Vigils control both the masters and the boys and yet establish a type of harmony.  This isn’t always easy and in this case ends in violence.      

The language is quite sophisticated in this novel so readers may need to study the text rather than read it for pleasure.  Nevertheless Cormier establishes a good narrative balance and gives a strong voice to the young adults involved. 

The text isn’t that easy to read. It has a huge cast. The boys are known by their first or their second name or both and it is easy to think that one character is three people. The masters are sometimes named just by their name and sometime as Brother. Where the name alone is used one can mistake them for students.     

The point of view shifts frequently, often mid-chapter. 

The book is 274 pages long with most of the chapters being short though there are one or two longer ones.