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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.)
. 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.
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 (
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.
(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 
(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. 
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.
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and 
. 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