BfK 10 – 14 Middle/Secondary continued Pay Attention, Carter Jones HHHHH


Gary D. Schmidt, Andersen Press, 224pp, 978-1783448050, £6.99 pbk


There’s humour and pathos in this skillfully structured story, and who could resist a book that uses cricket to convey its message of fair play, responsibility and resilience. Carter


mother and three


Jones and his family – younger sisters


– are in something of a state when, with Mary Poppins-like good timing and just the slightest sense of, if not magic, then something outside of the ordinary, the Butler arrives in their lives. Mr Bowles-Fitzpatrick was ‘gentleman’s gentleman’ to Carter’s grandfather and the old man has left an endowment in his will to support continuing service to the family. The Butler, as we know him pretty much throughout, brings the kind of order that is so satisfying in fiction, introducing Carter’s sisters to ballet and E Nesbit, ensuring their vomiting dachshund is regularly walked, and teaching Carter both how to drive his car (a purple Bentley) and, even more thrillingly, how to play cricket.


when they needed him most of all. With all the elegance of cricket at


its very best, Gary D. Schmidt has written a tender story of masculinity and


the Butler may be separated by a common language


companionship. Carter but


the and older


man understands exactly how the boy is feeling. Beautifully paced the book explains the importance for us all of making good decisions, and of remembering who we are and who we love. MMa


Bloom HHH


Nicola Skinner, HarperCollins, 363pp, 9780008297381, £12.99 hbk


In this story children start growing flowers and vegetables on their heads after some mysterious seeds are first found and then scattered. Their parents and teacher soon follow suit. And all because an old lady gardener, long dead, is now taking her revenge against a town where almost everything since she was alive has been concreted over. It falls to young Sorrel and her best friend Neena to finally make peace with this disturbed horticultural spirit, although they will still have flowers in their hair, quite literally, for the rest of their lives. Written as if by Sorrel herself


with determined sometimes almost relentless good humour, this first novel makes some cogent points about contemporary urban living at its most desolate. It also takes some welcome swipes at over-controlling secondary schools whose head teachers are in it mostly for their own ambition. But rebelling against the worst sort of autocratic


educational regimes in


real life can now in too many cases easily lead to a speedy exclusion. Being occasionally disruptive


at Cricket is the thread that holds the


book together. Each chapter opens with a paragraph on the rules of play and the game provides the Butler with means to guide Carter on the best ways to live, from the importance of paying attention to the need to keep up the bails. The book reaches its climax in a cricket match played at Carter’s school while the football team wait on the sidelines to start their own game and the spectators huddle in the bitter wind of a New York State October. Weather plays its part throughout


too. The Butler arrives in a rainstorm that reminds Carter of the tropical downpours of the Blue Mountains experienced on a camping trip with his soldier


father who is otherwise


one of the defining absences of the book. We learn gradually that Carter’s father will not be returning to his family, and that he wasn’t there either


school is more dangerous than it ever used to be and to that extent much less fun both for readers and the characters concerned when reflected in contemporary fiction. Both Sorrel and Neena are unjustly excluded at one point, with each facing serious repercussions as a result. While the author has a good line in salty dialogue she occasionally drops her guard when it comes to cheesy characterisations. Much is made of the obtrusive black nose-hairs sported by the school’s unpleasant headmaster Mr Grittysnit. This humour by uglification, as once so widely practised by Roald Dahl among others, has surely had its day and is better left, if at all, to contemporary ‘celebrity’ authors looking for cheap laughs. Sorrel’s chief pupil adversary is condemned, among other things, for coming from a home possessing a butler, chauffeur and maids. Again, this sort of lazy targeting is best avoided by any writer intent on following their own line while not also reaching out to boring old stereotypes. Because hidden away in this novel there is also some genuine originality of vision and


28 Books for Keeps No.236 May 2019


a fresh determination to make young readers think about their environment, and all credit for that. NT


A Tudor Turk - Book One of The Chronicles of Will Ryde


and Awa Maryam Al- Jameel HHHH


Rehan Khan, Hope Road Publishing, 285pp, 9781908446978, pbk £7.99


A Tudor Turk is a far sweeping and exciting historical


adventure story


taking us from 16th century Istanbul, to the Rialto Bridge in Venice, the inns of Canterbury, the streets of London and the court of Elizabeth 1. The two lead characters Will and


Awa are very appealing though quite different. The first few chapters outline their separate stories.


Will


Ryde, snatched at the age of five from a poor but happy life in London with his seamstress mother becomes a slave, firstly in the workshop of a swordsmith in Marrakesh and then as a galley slave on a Moroccan ship. Awa Maryam Al Jameel was a girl from a noble, educated West African family, also captured and used to entertain crowds


in gladiatorial as combat


due to her impressive skills as a swordswoman. When circumstances bring them together, they are selected


part an undercover


group of warriors tasked with saving a precious artefact, the staff Moses used to part the Red Sea which had been stolen from Sultan Murad III of Istanbul. Hence follows a rip-roaring adventure with some very evil villains and many gory fight scenes. Definitely not a story for the faint hearted. This book provides an interesting


and broader than usual perspective on the world during the reign of Elizabeth 1; a time in which the English Queen seeks to make links with Sultan Murad, powerful ruler of the Ottoman Empire. Through this story and its cast of characters East meets West and rich meets poor providing windows into very different worlds and demonstrating, in particular through the two main characters, how trust, collaboration and a sense of shared purpose bring people together. This is the first of a series and the


story ends with a clear indication there is plenty more adventure to come. SMc


A Wolf Called Wander HHHH


Rosanne Parry, illustrated by Mónica Armino, Andersen, 148pp, 9781783447909, £6.99 pbk


Inspired by a true story, this limpidly written account of an American grey wolf’s journey of more than 1000 miles in order to find a mate makes compelling reading. His mane is Swift, whatever the title may suggest, and he starts his epic travels after the rest of his family has been wiped out by a larger wolf pack. Leaving his former lair in the Oregon Mountains, two-year-old Swift has to use all his skills in order to feed himself and also evade attacks from other wolves. Humans, driving their ‘noisemakers’


(cars) along ‘black rivers’ (roads) pose another threat, especially when firing ‘lightning sticks’ (rifles) during hunts. Swift has therefore to employ all his


formidable skills, from wet-marking his temporary boundaries to working in tandem with a raven, who shows him where to find food in return for a taste of it herself. He talks to himself human-style


when articulating


thoughts and memories. But in every other way he is a proper one of his kind, salivating over the prospect of killing and eating a new-born foal, although in this he is thwarted. When he finally finds his mate-to-be Night, who has also travelled over the same distance in order to be with him, their sex life is not mentioned as such, much though he admires her beauty. Three cubs duly


follow with Night


receiving a well-earned nose-touch in recognition of her maternal success. They


deserve their hard-fought


domestic harmony, as do by implication all those other migrants, humans and animals currently in search of a home and to whom this fine story is dedicated. Beautifully and copiously illustrated in black and white by the Spanish artist Mónica Armiňo, it is well in the tradition of the Jack London school of tough realism mixed with a compassionate understanding of the animal world. Some notes on wolves after the story is finished complete an excellent package. NT


The Middler HHH


Kirsty Appelbaum, Nosy Crow, 261pp, 9781788003452, £6.99 pbk


Dystopian stories for younger readers often try to offer some hope in their final pages despite all the various horrors and set-backs that might have happened to main characters before. But Kirsty Appelbaum in her first novel does this by contriving a last minute rescue so unconvincing that even Enid Blyton may have hesitated before going down a similar path. Otherwise well-written, the story


revolves around eleven-year-old Maggie, the middle of three children, hence the book’s title. This is not a bad position to hold, given that all the oldest children in her village are sent away to fight in what’s known as the ‘Quiet War’ once they are fourteen. They never return, and the idea that all the parents concerned continue to go along with this absurd situation year after year is another unlikelihood difficult to swallow. Maggie then meets Una, a girl her age and one of a band of wanderers banned from the village and generally demonised as major undesirables by the sinister village mayor. But Maggie overcomes her prejudices and forms a close relationship with Una before disaster strikes. Set


in rural surroundings


reminiscent of the countryside around Winchester where the author grew up, there are some good moments here conveyed in an effectively punchy prose style. When she finds a plot equal to her ambitions, Applebaum could well be a writer to watch. NT


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