The Call

The Call by Peadar O’Guilin

Book of the Week: 30 October 2016

the-call

I hope you have all had a good half-term and are ready for a suitably frightening Book of the Week in time for Halloween. The Call depicts an Ireland that is now united against the Sidhe (pronounced ‘shee’), the fairy folk of Irish mythology.

The story opens on Nessa’s tenth birthday when she learns that most young people in the country have been taken by the Sidhe. Sometime during her teenage years, without warning, she will get ‘the call’ when she will be transported to the monstrous land of the Sidhe, the Grey Land. There the Sidhe will hunt her down. If she does not outrun them she will die. In our world this will last three minutes, in the Grey Land victims will need to run and hide for the entire day.

Four years later and Nessa is with her friend Megan on the way to survival camp where she will be trained in order to give her the best chance of coming back alive. She will need every bit of grit she can muster to withstand the horrors and to find alternative ways of coping – Nessa has been disabled by polio and runs using crutches.

The Call is grim and gripping and, although the teenagers-fighting-for-survival element is similar to books such as The Hunger Games, Insurgent and The Maze Runner, the writing and the folklore, as well as the truly disturbing experiences of those hunted in the the Grey Land, make it a fresh and exciting read. However, it is not for the faint-hearted and frank language and violent scenes make it more suitable for older readers.

There is a detailed interview with Peadar O’Guilin here.

Lifers

Lifers by M.A. Griffin

Book of the Week: 9 October 2016

lifers

It is 2 a.m. and Preston is wandering down an ink-black street in Manchester looking for his friend Alice. She has recently disappeared and he is determined to find her. What he finds instead is a sinister scientific institute where they think they have discovered the answer to prison over-population. Something called the Kepler valve means that offenders can be ‘stored’ in a very small space. Those behind the scheme don’t seem to care what the conditions are like, or that those who are imprisoned are teenagers. What about Alice? Has she disappeared into this dreadful place? She has done nothing wrong. Preston means to get answers even if it means braving this nightmarish prison.

If you are a fan of The Maze Runner series, you may enjoy this.

M.A. Griffin has previously written Poison Boy under the name Fletcher Moss. Read an excerpt from Lifers on the publisher, Chicken House’s website and an interview with the author here.

Here to Eternity

Here to Eternity by Andrew Motion

Book of the Week: 2 October 2016

here-to-eternity

It’s National Poetry Day on Thursday, so this week’s book is an anthology of poetry chosen by Sir Andrew Motion who was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009.

As the book’s blurb says, this is ‘a rich spectrum of poetic voices – ancient and modern, foreign and familiar. Arranged concentrically, each section – Self, Home, Town, Work, Land, Love, Travel, War, Belief and Space – seeks out resemblances and finds echoes elsewhere, creating the impression of an expanding universe, from Wallace Stevens to Stevie Smith, Joseph Brodsky to Jo Shapcott, Bob Dylan to Dylan Thomas, Ben Jonson to Benjamin Zephaniah.’

If you would like to explore poetry online, here are some resources you might like to look at:

The Poetry Archive which has a section devoted to children’s poetry 

Poetry Station which features poets and actors reading poetry, as well as animations of poems.

The Poetry Society which also has a section featuring poets reading their own work and explaining what inspired them.