The Beautiful Game

                                             

2002

 Jon Blake’s The Beautiful Game has an older protagonist, a teenager who is good at snooker. The book is just 79  pages long,  and the text, although blocked implying it is for a fluent reader, is double-spaced and in a child-friendly font. The chapters are short. The book has a decent spine. Only those interested in snooker would choose it. It contains a first person narrative which would suit the teen reader. This is high-low - a simple text for the older struggling reader.    

 
There is tension right from the beginning. By the end of the first chapter - just four and half pages long the protagonist knows  “I’m going to get my arse kicked by Creeping Death” (9). By the end of Chapter 3 Jamie’s estranged father has turned up at the family home and upset his mother.

Gradually, Jamie’s dad creeps back into their lives. He gets Jamie a new cue. Jamie has to hide this from his mother but she does find it eventually. Do we trust Jamie’s father? He turns up one day with a bruise on his cheek. He has been in a fight with another man who thought that he was looking at his wife.    

After Jamie’s mother has found the new cue and is not happy about it. Jamie runs away form home and joins his dad. However what he finds is not pleasant: “there is a stink of aftershave,stale beer and rotten food. The sides are chock-a-block with pizza boxes, paper plates and empty cans of lager” (47). 

Later, Jamie clears the place up and is pleased with himself (56-57). But it is all spoilt when his father brings his mates home and an orgy takes place (58).

His father lets him down. Yet Jamie manages to pull himself together enough to win the big game, defeating Creeping Death. He realises that his mother was right all along. He walks away from the beautiful game. 

This story does indeed have plenty of negatives but the ending is completely upbeat and will appeal to the mature reader.              

Theodore Boone The Fugitive by John Grisham

 

2015

I actually found this book in the teen section at the local library.  Younger teens may very well enjoy it though it lacks some of the peer pressure and sexual angst often seen in books for this age group. 

However, protagonist Theodore Boone does take charge of his world and in this case helps convict a man of murder. In a sub-plot we see him act as a lawyer in an Animal Court.

There may be no latent sexuality or love interest but Theo’s best friend is April. 

Theo is just thirteen years old and we and our young readers may be amused that he and his classmates take great delight in “passing gas” on the coach when they go on a school trip. 

John Grisham employs a very readable simple prose here. His characters are very well-drawn – believable and rounded.  Theo waivers between demanding justice and being scared of the consequences of his actions. Uncle Ike is a rather eccentric but good-hearted character. The Boone parents argue about the law in a friendly way.  With Theo, they are firm but fair. April is more adventurous in her choice if ice-cream than Theo; she goes for a new flavour every time whereas he always has the chocolate covered in Oreos. 

Grisham raises the tricky topic of illegal immigrants or “undocumented workers”.  The chief witness in the trial, Bobby Escobar, is an illegal immigrant. The defence argues that he is taking an American’s job and that he s is only giving this evidence so that the police will protect him. In the discussion around this Theo thinks that many Americans would not want to do the work that Bobby does.      

This particular edition is easy to read.  It is a double-spaced hardback, part of  five book box set. At the end of the main text there are some useful further activities.      

               

Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers

                                                    

 

2017

Oliver Jeffers’ Here We Are looks like and behaves like a standard picture book for pre-schoolers. 

It is a large, almost square book and though portrait in orientation it is big enough for adult and child to share. It has scant text which is formatted in an adult serif font with difficult ‘a’s and ‘g’s. The pictures give more information than the text. Yet the information in it is probably for the older child.  Indeed, 

the information in it is so important that it is appropriate that the text is shared between child and adult.
It brings a totally positive message. Its subtitle is “Notes for Living on the Plant Earth”. It is the point of view of parent explaining to a child what the world is about. A message in the front papers says “The book was written in the first two months of your life as I tried to make sense of it all for you”. Or is it that the writer is trying to make sense of it all for himself and other adults? 

We start off with a description of our place in the universe and then we explore the planet Earth in more detail. We look at the land, the sea, and what we can see in the sky at night. Then we move on to the human body and its needs. There are double spreads showing all sorts of human beings and all sorts of animals. The writer recognises that the child will have all sorts of questions. He also tackles time and warns that it goes by quickly. 

There is enough for everyone - physically, intellectually and emotionally. There are a lot of people in the world to love and be loved by. 

The book rejoices in abundance and positivity. 

The only tiny shadow is the warning about time slipping by.  
                

The Song of Somewhere Else by A/F. Harrold and Levi Pinfold

 

2017

This is a slightly puzzling book. It seems to be a book for the fluent reader at the end of junior school. Yet it contains elements for other age groups. 

It certainly has a nice fat spine and uses blocked text which suggests the fluent reader.  It also uses a serif font and includes difficult a and g which again is normal for this reader.  

It makes a concession to the new reader by containing a double-spaced text.

As in picture books for the pre-school child, the pictures add to the story, although they are in black and white and are more sophisticated than they would be for the younger child. Pictures are clearly important in this book; it was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway prize in 2018. The text also included quite a few decorative elements. Some of the pictures, however, are very dark ,  e.g. the double spreads on pages 116-17 and 162-3, and this brings it back up into the older age group.       

There are elements also that suggest a teen reader. The protagonist reasons logically – is she in   Piaget’s formal operations stage? She behaves like a teenager. She is reluctant to tell her father about her day at school. Bullying is a teen theme. 

The children are left home alone so there is plenty of opportunity for them to have their adventure on their own.  

It includes high fantasy elements – including a troll mother and a talking cat. Shades of Alice? 

 Bordering on horror? We are also treated to the mystery woman – the agent of Extra-Existent affairs.

        

Ark Angel by Anthony Horowitz

                                            

 

2015, first published 2005  

This is the sixth of the Alex Rider books. It starts off with Alex almost recovered form a bullet wound at the end of the last adventure. The bullet only just missed his heart.  He befriends the boy in the next room.  Paul is the son of a very wealthy business man, Nikolei Drevin.  An attempt is made at kidnapping Paul but Alex takes his place.

All is not what it seems. The aggressive activist group Force Three is a set up: Drevin has commissioned it to make him look innocent when he blows up the space hotel he has been working on with the British government.  The project is bleeding money and Drevin wants to get rid of it. He has arranged for it to fall out of the sky and act like a nuclear bomb that will wipe out Washington.  Alex’ a guardian, Jack Starbright, is currently staying in Washington with her parents.  

Drevin also makes several attempts to toughen up his son. The kidnapping is his idea and had it not gone wrong with Alex taking Paul’s place, Paul would have lost a finger.  

Alex, who has still not quite recovered from the operation to remove the bullet, is now sent by the CIA to move the bomb to another part of the space hotel, so that it explodes harmlessly in space.

Anthony Horowitz supplies us with graphic details of what travelling in space would feel like.     

The book is 346 pages long, with blocked text and an adult but simple font. The chapters are quite long.

Stories of the First World War by Jim Eldridge

 

  

2014

This is neither an easy nor comfortable read.  It includes twelve short stories about the Great War. Each one is told from the point of view of a young person.  Most of them are to do with combat and many feature death. A couple of civilian stories are also quite grim. One involves a bombing, anxious parents and the rescue of a friend and a dog. The other is about a much-changed young man who at first cannot face going home; he was one of only seven of the Accrington Pals who survived. He is different now also because he has been a prisoner of war.   

      

Jim Eldrige writes a few of the stories from a German point of view.  The British and the German experiences are very similar. He even tackles the conscientious objector – the “conchie” and invites the young reader not to see this just in black and white. 

The stories are in chronological order and there are sections between them that give historical contexts.    

This would be an extremely useful book for teachers or parents wanting to study the Great War with   children. The child probably needs some adult guidance.  

The Boy at the back of the Class by Anjali Q Raúf

                                                        

 

 2018  

The story is told by a naïve female narrator. She loves school, has some good friends and has a comfortable life with her mother. We learn that her father died in a car accident when she was six.  Her mother has to do two jobs to keep them fed, clothed and sheltered.  But she lives in a safe environment.   We also learn that her paternal grandmother was a Holocaust survivor.  

The new boy Ahmet arrives at school.  He does not speak English. The narrator and her three chums try to make him feel welcome.  Gradually he is able to respond to the offered friendship.

The children learn that it soon may not be possible for Ahmet’s parents to join him because the Border Agency will “close the gates” in a few days’ time.  They seek the Queen’s help and end up storming the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. This is seen by some as an act of terrorism!  

All comes good. Ahmet gradually learns English. His parents are found. They are all invited to Buckingham Palace to have tea with the Queen.

This isn’t without a struggle. Ahmet and his friends have to face Brendan-the Bully and some xenophobic adults, including one teacher at their school and a local MP.

There are good adults too: most of the teachers at the school, the greengrocer who finds the pomegranates and a kind taxi-driver.  We must not forget Her Majesty the Queen.  

Even though the protagonist is somewhat naïve, she realises that some people can’t help their first reaction to somebody who dresses differently and eats different food.  

There are materials at the end of the book that will be useful for teachers.   

This is in a normal blocked text and the book contains just a few simple drawings which are meant to be the work of the narrator.  The narrator may be a little too naïve for some maturer readers.