BfK


again. Lauren has shown a kind of moody impulsiveness before – we’ve seen her give her grandmother, who had refused to see her for many months, a ferocious verbal working over. Now she jumps from one false accusation to another, attacking the very people who have been supportive of her. It may be this erratic side, balanced by her courage, humour and self-criticism, which makes her a character readers will care about.


The truth inevitably emerges


revealed, the responses of her fellow pupils and her teachers are genuinely moving; somehow optimistic rather than sentimental. To blend empathy and comedy in writing about an area that remains beyond the direct experience of most is something of a tour de force. GF


are


spectacularly so, just as Lauren takes to the catwalk in her little


beach dress. The show collapses into catastrophe, but as Lauren’s secret and her betrayer


yellow dramatically –


10 – 14 Middle/Secondary continued The School of Art


HHHHH


Teal Triggs and Daniel Frost, Wide Eyed Editions, 96pp 978-1-84780-611-6, £14.99 hbk


Visit the shop at most large


galleries and you will find a good selection of art books for children and young people. This one would prove a welcome addition. Large and square it offers a particularly involving experience by inviting readers to imagine they are attending an art course over an academic year.


imaginary ‘professors’, each with a different personality and each with a different expertise, give between them 40 ‘lessons’ covering such basics as form, line, composition, colour, shape and perspective. Each lesson sets out some core principles and then suggests a guided activity. The lessons on colour explore such things as colour wheels,


colours lighter and darker and the aesthetic


affect of using


making colours


Five art


that


contrast.


harmonise


individual’s response to different colours is linked to associations built on their experiences, culture and education.


painting a picture of two rooms- one bright yellow, and the other blue -and then asking ten people which room looks happy and which calm. This could lead to interesting discussion about


different colours. the emotional


‘What is ‘rhythm’ in art?’ particularly interesting.


look up a painting by Bridget Riley on the internet and to track the repeated patterns and rhythms.


There


trying out techniques – for example lesson 7 shows


‘visually balanced.’


inspire readers to think and wonder. How do design choices help make us use our senses? Can ethical issues be expressed through art?


14+ Secondary/Adult One HHHHH


Sarah Crossan, Bloomsbury, 430pp, 9781408863114, £10.99 hbk


Grace and Tipi are twins. Nothing extraordinary about that, but they are, in fact, conjoined twins and though their upper bodies are separate, they share a lower body. For the reader - and indeed, the community among which they move - this is difficult to comprehend. For Tipi and Grace it is their life. Then comes devastating news requiring a difficult and dangerous solution.


The success of this book is not just that Crossan once again uses a blank verse form for


that Tipi and Grace are such distinct characters. They may be twins, but they are very different from each other. It is Grace we get to know best because the story is told by Grace, but feisty Tipi is never far away (literally and metaphorically). This could have been mawkish but Crossan never allows her characters to wallow in self-pity. She has clearly researched the scenario extensively, but again there is no sense of this being ‘a case


employs ensures that there can be no unnecessary verbiage; description is immediate and pertinent.


Writing such a book is a brave move. The subject of conjoined twins is alien and could smack of voyeurism. What Crossan shows very clearly, however, is that these girls - as others in similar predicaments - are real people with hopes, fears, wishes and ambitions. She does this with great skill. Though one might suggest an 14+ readership, this could


mature younger KS3 readers. Highly recommended.


be recommended study’. The verse form she the narrative, but


The Rest of Us Just Live Here HHHHH


Patrick Ness, Walker, 356pp, 978-1-4063-3116-5, £12.99, hbk


Patrick


somewhat on the same conceit as Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz


Ness’s new novel


Guildenstern are Dead or the John Smith’s bachelor party sequence in Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery, where usually unregarded peripheral figures in a story are given their own tale to tell. The clue is in the title of the novel. Italicised paragraphs beginning ‘In which …’ precede each chapter. But, contrary to the usual practice, they don’t summarise the action that follows. Instead, they tell a different but connecting story. And the story that’s in the background here is the one that’s in the foreground in other teen novels, in which young people


Gods or other otherworldly beings and become involved in apocalyptic struggles for the souls of humankind. In the foreground are Mikey and his friends in their last year at High School, preoccupied by the perhaps more mundane but equally stressful adolescent problems of love, family, friendship and passing exams.


This could be played entirely


humour but Ness’s account is mostly straight faced,


for to FH


wink here and there at his readers. Instead, through Mikey’s eyes, we see how the ordinary might live with the extraordinary and treat it as only one of the pressures that complicate this time of life. Ness is collapsing two familiar forms of writing for teens. Perhaps, too, in passing, he may be commenting on how all our otherwise private lives are, in these days of instant news, led side by side with scenes of suffering


30 Books for Keeps No.214 September 2015 with only the odd are visited by Vampires,


relies and


and devastation; scenes which can, with shocking suddenness, like on a beach in Tunisia, affect some of us more directly. Perhaps … But the enjoyment in the story comes from Ness’s facility with character, action and, particularly, dialogue. We are presented


situations that we have seen in one form or another in many novels and films for young people and the author consistently draws our attention to it. Nevertheless, this accomplished and intriguing novel is entirely convincing in itself.


Liquidator HHHH


Andy Mulligan, David Fickling, 388pp, 978-1-9102-001-4 8, £12.99 hbk


Told from diverse points of view, a popular practice in teen publishing these days, this story follows a group of older children experiencing their first work placements. One of them, working for a powerful multi-national firm, takes home the office laptop in need of repair after she had spilt coffee over it. But she and her friends discover that this laptop also contains details of a campaign launch involving a new fizzy drink that had previously been


African tried


dire results. What follows is a chase between the heavies employed by the firm who want the laptop back come what may and the teenagers determined to thwart them.


This novel is written somewhat in the spirit of Emil and the Detectives but now updated to foiling crimes committed in the global economy. As in so many adventure stories, opportunities


or even the Guardian newspaper, are never


to tip off the police, taken up as the story


children, out occasionally on


impoverished with


with characters and


finally out-runs itself, but not before many excitements along the way. Each young character in their work placement comes to play a vital role, providing a pleasing symmetry to an already satisfying if increasingly unlikely read.


NT Fire Colour One HHHHH


Jenny Valentine, HarperCollins, 238pp, 978-0-0075-1236-2, £6.99 pbk


CB


Jenny Valentine does not disappoint. From the moment she arrived on the scene with Finding Violet Park, her books have been original, absorbing and beautifully written. Her latest novel, Fire Colour One, continues the tradition.


Sixteen-year-old Iris has been brought unwillingly to meet her father Ernest, a rich artist and collector, who is dying. Iris has never met him and she certainly doesn’t want to meet him now. This is not because she is passionately supportive of her mother, Hannah. Far from it. Hannah is selfish, self-centred and obsessed with money, as is her boyfriend. But while Iris is determined to hate Ernest, things are not always as they seem.


Cleverly written from Iris’s point of view, the reader is immediately drawn to her spiky, individual voice. The characters – the monstrous Hannah, the


Thurston and, of course, Ernest come alive through her. As is often the case in Valentine’s work, absence and the effect of that absence is at the centre, in particular the absent father. However, absence can create myths which are often deceptive. Here we also find another common theme in her novels – deception, the beautiful con.


(and the readers) must find their way Like a maze, the characters failed actor Lowell,


design can still be All the lessons


how an are many opportunities for


hatching marks to give an object volume and texture and lesson 26, on symmetry, shows asymmetrical


how to use cross- Children are directed to I found lesson 32 affect The activity suggests


Lesson 17, notes that an


and


those


that


Well designed and colourful pages, differentiated use of print and some highly amusing pictures of cartoon characters add to the book’s worth and appeal. And, while it conveys a great deal of information that goes far beyond the superficial, reading the text is rather like engaging in a conversation.


of


This is one of those books that can be enjoyed by people of different ages. There is much here to help primary aged children to ‘think visually’ with some support from teacher or parent. The activity in lesson 34 is to make a map of the journey from home to school, indicating memorable sights, smells and sounds. Lesson 35 on how we can tell a story by using pictures ends by suggesting children make a comic strip. The invitation to make their own creative contribution to the ‘final exhibition’ using the blank frame at the end of the book will appeal across age groups. The comprehensive coverage, scholarly glossary and bibliography make the book an excellent resource for children and teachers in secondary schools. As I read it I sometimes felt the need of an index- but this is a tiny quibble about a very fine art book. MM


absent


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