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diverse books

Boys don't cry by Malorie Blackman

23rd January 2015 by Jax Blunt 2 Comments

Boys dont cry Malorie BlackmanBoys Don’t Cry |

Despite Malorie Blackman’s reputation, I’ve somehow come this far without reading any of her work. I finally put that right this week, when one of Big’s friends lent me Boys don’t cry, and I read it in one sitting. (Who needs sleep anyway?)

Blurb:

In Boys Don’t Cry, bestselling author Malorie Blackman explores the unchartered territory of teenage fatherhood.

You’re waiting for the postman – he’s bringing your A level results. University, a career as a journalist – a glittering future lies ahead. But when the doorbell rings it’s your old girlfriend; and she’s carrying a baby. Your baby.

You’re happy to look after it, just for an hour or two. But then she doesn’t come back – and your future suddenly looks very different.

Malorie’s dramatic new novel will take you on a journey from tears to laughter and back again.

As I’ve written before in my review of Non Pratt’s Trouble teenage pregnancy has a particular resonance for me. And I’ve often wondered about the male point of view, and how different behaviour would be if the boys ever thought they might be the ones doing the child care. But then again, when teenagers are drunk at parties, childcare isn’t high on anyone’s priority list.

Maybe if a few more people read books like this, it would be 😉

From the first moment that Dante lays eyes on his baby, he desperately wants it to be someone else’s problem. Because raising a child on your own is a problem. He quickly finds out how hard it is – mentally, emotionally, and financially. That part of the book is well drawn. There isn’t as much focus as I would like on developing the relationship between Dante and his baby, or even really getting to know Dante, because there are a couple of other layers of story going on. This is a family with a lot of complications – as usual I’m trying to stay away from spoilers. For me it felt overloaded – and dealt with on a slightly superficial level, because of how much is being crammed in.

There’s a huge amount going on in this book. I read it very quickly, and feel like maybe I didn’t do it justice in that, perhaps it’s one that needs a bit more exploring. I certainly feel that I’m going to look out some of her other books now. And I’m going to recommend this one, particularly to any and all teenagers I know. It is good to read the other side of the story as it were.

(I’m already losing track of how many books this year. How bad is that? I think this was my third though. Joining in with read 52 or your own personal challenge? Let me know in the comments.)

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Filed Under: 2015, Book club, read52 Tagged With: Boys don't cry, diverse books, Malorie Blackman, teenage pregnancy, UKYA

From Skallagrigg to Wonder via Just Because, diverse disability books

30th October 2014 by Jax Blunt 4 Comments

There was a great twitter chat tonight on the #SupportWNDB tags, focussing on disability representation in fiction. It got me thinking of the books I could bring to mind featuring disability or illness.

skallagrigg

Buy at amazon

(secondhand)

An old favourite is the Skallagrigg. Unites Arthur, a little boy abandoned many years ago in a grim hospital in northern England, with Esther, a radiantly intelligent young girl who is suffering from cerebral palsy, and with Daniel, an American computer-games genius I think this possibly does fall prey to the superpower compensatory principle, in which a disabled character has to have a balancing super attribute (radiantly intelligent v in wheelchair) but it’s one of the phew I can bring to mind which features multiple disabled characters, and there are no miracle cures. It’s a satisfying story, but not what you’d call a happy ending really. It’s stayed with me for years, so pretty powerful.

A series that cropped up in the chat is the Vorkosigan saga (amazon). Unusual in that they are SF featuring a character with a physical disability (series starts before his birth and is worth reading from the beginning), and while this situation changes throughout the series, there aren’t any easy miracle cures, despite the futuristic nature of the books. I have often highly recommended Lois McMaster Bujold books, and they always provide lots to think about, as well as being great ripping yarns – adventure stories that rocket along.

just because rebecca elliott

Buy at Amazon

Picture books – I love Just Because, and not only because we have a cherished signed version sitting on my cherished books shelf. This is a lovely story about siblings Toby and Clemmie, and what Toby thinks about his sister’s very special chair. It’s level headed and direct, in the way many children are, and for adults, knowing that these are the author’s own children might make it that little bit more special too.

In contemporary YA, Wonder is a book that is often mentioned. Born with a severe facial deformity, Augie has been homeschooled to protect him, but now his parents have decided it’s time for him to try school and getting along with other children. It’s heart warming, and well worth reading the Julian Chapter (review) too. (And keep an eye on blog, I’ve a Wonder related giveaway coming very soon.)

Invisible disabilities are sometimes more difficult to feature. Autism hit the headlines with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Amazon) which went down well with Small, but grates slightly for me – but then again I’m not a teenage autistic boy, so who am I to say whether it is realistic or not? It is, after all, meant to be fiction, and not all fiction can speak to all people.

By contrast, Whisper by Chrissie Keighery(amazon) felt painfully close to the mark. I’m half deaf – I should wear a hearing aid but I gave up when Big was born, as artifically enhanced baby screaming was just too much to cope with. (I really should go and get tested for a digital aid, I understand they are a lot better at only amplifying the speech sounds, and not the background as well.) Anyway, this means that total hearing loss feels like a very plausible thing for me, and it’s an utterly terrifying idea, so this novel about a girl dealing with precisely that hit close to home. Reviewed by Alison here.

Mockingbird(Amazon) is a complicated book, in which the protagonist’s sibling died in a school shooting. She has Asperger’s and is struggling to process the death of someone close to her. Reviewed back in 2012 and I can’t actually remember what I said! Might go back and look. The review was long before my own Asperger’s diagnosis.

One last one crept into my mind as I was wrapping up. Child of Silence is the first in a series of books featuring a Child Abuse investigator called Bo Bradley who has bipolar disorder. Again, this is something I have no personal experience of, but I remember quite clearly the lyrical descriptions in this book of sliding in and out of a shared reality, and they’ve stayed with me. Probably enhanced by the fact that the child in question is deaf (not blowing too much of the story there I hope) which gave me a connection with the story too.

So there you have it. A completely non comprehensive and very subjective list of books that seem to me to be diverse, but with a disability focus. What have I missed that absolutely should be featured? Let me know.

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Filed Under: Book club Tagged With: aspergers., autism, Bo Bradley, diverse books, Just Because, Rebecca Elliott, skallagrigg, SupportWNDB, Wonder

Red Leaves by Sita Brahmachari

7th October 2014 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

Aisha is a thirteen-year-old refugee living in London. Happy for the first time since leaving her war-torn home, she is devastated when her foster mother announces that a new family has been found for her and she will be moving on. Feeling rejected and abandoned, Aisha packs her bags and runs away, seeking shelter in the nearby woods.

Meanwhile, a few doors down, twelve-year-old Zak is trying to cope with his parents’ divorce. Living in a near-building site while the new house is being refurbished, he feels unsettled and alone. Discovering a piece of rubble with the original builder’s signature set into it, he starts researching the history behind his home – and in doing so finds a connection with a young soldier from the past, which leads him to an old air-raid shelter in the same woods.

Both children, previously unknown to each other, meet in the heart of the ancient city woodland as they come into the orbit of Elder, a strange homeless woman who lives amongst the trees – and, as helicopters hover overhead and newspapers fill with pictures of the two lost children, unexpected bonds are formed and lives changed forever . . .

Red Leaves Sita Brahmachari

Buy at Amazon | Buy at Hive

icon

Blurb above from Amazon. I found it a bit dissatisfying – there are indeed 2 lost children in the plot, but there’s another child who is central to the story, and I found it peculiar that she’s missed out of the blurb. Having said that, there are parts within the story where she discusses her invisibility, so perhaps the exclusion is intentional?

There’s been a lot recently in the media about diverse books and how we need more of them. This book is definitely diverse, featuring families built up from people all around the world. There’s a wealth of information about different cultures, as well as the local and individual histories. There’s more at play than just the present too, with strands of other worldly happenings that reminded me of Alan Garner books from my childhood.

With all that said, what can sometimes worry me is diversity for the sake of diversity – where books are put forward just because of the boxes they tick. That’s not this book. It’s not about ticking boxes, it’s about telling stories, weaving tales from past and present, far and near around the world, and bringing them all together in a wonderful crescendo. This is the first Sita Brahmachari title I’ve read, and I requested it on Netgalley because both Big and one of her friends recommended previous titles. It certainly won’t be the last one I read – I’m planning on raiding Artichoke Hearts from my daughter’s shelves very soon.

I loved the characters in this book, particularly the children (although there’s a strong supporting cast of adults), and I longed for them to find their answers. I didn’t quite cry at the end, I think because it felt so right. It is very emotional though – there’s such a lot going on and so many threads to tie together.

I’m sorry if this review feels a bit vague – I really don’t want to inadvertently sprinkle any spoilers. Basically, I highly recommend this book.

Here’s the trailer if you’d like to see more

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Filed Under: Book club, read52 Tagged With: diverse books, Red Leaves, refugee, runaways, Sita Brahmachari

Home ed days: learning to read with Songbird phonics

3rd June 2014 by Jax Blunt 1 Comment

So, like I said the other day, The Book People had a sale on. Which was cruel of them. (Newsflash: Tuesday 10th until midnight, click here to use SHELL10 for 10% off your order! since released a new discount code of 5% off sales over £35, just use AFPEACH)

So I ordered Songbird Phonics, a reading scheme written by Julia Donaldson, and also a pack of Walker Stories, which I had some idea I could partly use as prizes.

I’m afraid I’m going to have to buy something else to use as prizes, these are such a fab collection there’s no way I’m giving any of them away!

Today Smallest has picked her way through Top Cat, the first of the songbird phonics books. I remember Small learning to read with these, right after Stile trays, and before his brief flirtation with ORT, before he gave up on all of that and headed for Harry Potter. I think it may take Smallest a little longer to crack it all – I don’t think she’s currently got the motivation he had, although it may well be coming. But she is getting the hang of most letters, beginning to blend, and does recognise words repeated from page to page. So, a good start.

Handa's surprising day jack's little partyAnd after she’d read that, I read Handa’s Surprising Day (Walker Stories) and Jack’s Little Party (Walker Stories). These are just great. They are small format, so the bag of 30 is quite portable, but each book has three stories in it. The illustrations are black and white, but they’re still beautifully detailed. I am a little confused, as we have Handa’s Surprise which is one of the stories in Handa’s surprising day, and I’m sure it’s not quite as detailed as in this book – I’ll have to dig it out and check.

(Rather than buying the books individually from Amazon via the affiliate links above, why not check out the entire 30 book collection of Walker stories for £15. (Yes this is also an affiliate link, but to the Book People. Books….)

Ahem. Enough of the subliminal advertising. 😉

Reading. Even though at the moment mostly what I’m doing is sleeping, and I’m very grateful that Big can cook (spaghetti bolognese for tea tonight, yum) we are still fitting in those little bits of home education that can be done quietly sitting down. So there’s our home ed days update. For more regular photographic input, check out the #100homeeddays tag on a variety of social networks – I’m tending to use instagram, but I’ve seen them on fb and twitter as well.

I will attempt to do a 300 Picture books update some time this week, if I can stay awake long enough (touch wood the headache is *finally* wearing off tonight) but blogging may be a little hit and miss for a while. Bear with me.

Linked up with #homeedlinkup – see the other posts here

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Filed Under: reeling, writhing, Soa Tagged With: diverse books, learning to read, songbird phonics, the book people, walker stories

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