Monthly Archives: June 2018

The 1,000-Year-Old Boy

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The 1,000 Year-Old-Boy by Ross Welford

Book of the Week: 24 June 2018

Cover illustration by Tom Clohosy Cole

You remember the Vikings sailing up the River Tyne, raiding your settlements and setting them alight. You knew Charles Dickens and have some signed copies of his books. You are something called a ‘neverdead’ and, provided you don’t meet with an accident, you will live forever and never look any older. Alfie, his mum and his cat Biffa are neverdeads and live in a house surrounded by woodland, keeping themselves to themselves. Then, one day, Alfie encounters Aidan Linklater and Roxy Minto who live on a nearby housing estate and his life gets much more complicated.

Alfie has come to learn that there are problems being a neverdead, one of which is that people get suspicious when old pictures in local newspapers show you and your mum looking the same age as they are now but in a photograph taken many years ago. More than this, however, is that the friends you are fond of, grow up and leave you behind. Alfie has come to realise that this needs to change.

This adventure has a great central premise, memorable characters and plenty of suspense and explores the idea of being almost immortal.

If you would like to read more of Ross Welford’s books, his website is here and they are all in the school library.

White Rabbit, Red Wolf

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White Rabbit, Red Wolf by Tom Pollock

Book of the Week: 17 June 2018

Illustration by Peter Strain

The first chapter sees Pete Blankman crouching in a corner of the larder having eaten practically everything in the kitchen. He has run out of food, so has tried the contents of the salt cellar, reducing it to shards of porcelain. Pete is a mathematical prodigy who suffers extreme and incapacitating anxiety attacks. His mother, in a brisk, no-nonsense way, tries to help him cope but the person he truly feels connected to is his twin sister Bel, who he regularly calls his ‘axiom’. The salt cellar incident has been triggered by the fact that Pete is expected to attend an award ceremony at the Natural History Museum, where his mother, Dr Blankman, will be honoured for her research. As he feared, the occasion sets off one of Pete’s anxiety attacks and he leaves the ceremony and runs through the corridors of the museum with his mother in pursuit. Then he hears her call for help and turns back to find she has been stabbed. Before he has a chance to do anything, his mother’s colleagues have called an ambulance and whisked him away to a residential street in Hackney that turns out to be a cover for a secret service location. He learns that his mother was part of the organisation and that his sister is missing and may have had something to do with the attack.

This is a fast-moving thriller where it is hard to know who to trust. The time-frame flips from the present to several years ago at regular intervals and Pete frequently thinks about situations in mathematical terms. The strong language and violence make it more suited to older readers who enjoy a story with plenty of twists and turns.

The Extraordinary Colours of Auden Dare

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The Extraordinary Colours of Auden Dare by Zillah Bethell

Book of the Week: 10 June 2018

Cover illustration by Matt Saunders

When steak from the vending machine costs £80,000, a bag of King Edward potatoes at £5,000 seems like a bargain. Auden and his mum are shopping in Cambridge and, as you might guess from the price list, the world is different from our own. This is a future Britain where it hardly ever rains and countries have gone to war over water. Food prices have soared and water is rationed. The immediate problem facing Auden and his mum is that they have moved across the country to Unicorn Cottage which has been left to them by his uncle, Jonah Bloom. Auden’s mum says the cottage is untidy because Jonah was an eccentric inventor who had no time for tidiness, but Auden thinks someone has broken in and has been looking for something. When he makes friends with his allocated ‘New School Buddy’, Vivi Rookmini, who lives with her mother in rooms in a Cambridge college, they find an extraordinary invention in Uncle Jonah’s shed and Auden thinks his uncle has been working on a cure for Auden’s inability to see colour. This is exciting enough for Auden, but what happens next turns out to be a lot more important and will affect the future of everyone on the planet.

I also read My Messed-Up Life by Susin Nielsen this week, about Violet who thinks the answer to her single mum’s problems would be to date George Clooney. It is a fun read but I think practically all her books have featured as Book of the Week over the years, so it only gets a mention rather than a headline.

Don’t Call Me Ishmael

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Don’t Call Me Ishmael by Michael Gerard Bauer

Book of the Week: 3 June 2018

Cover design by crushed.co.uk

‘Call me Ishmael’ is the famous opening line of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Ishmael Leseur’s parents met at university where they studied the novel and, because Mrs Leseur thought she was the size of a whale when she was expecting her first child, they called him Ishmael. Although he thinks of himself as the Mayor of Loserville he didn’t have any problems with his name until he started at St Daniel’s Boys College, his secondary school, and Barry Bagsley started picking on him and calling him Fishtail Le Sewer.

His troubles get worse when a small, neat boy called James Scobie starts school and his teacher appoints him as James’ ‘official buddy’. James dresses as if his grandfather is his fashion guru and arranges his belongings on his desk in perfect alignment. He is an obvious target for Barry Bagsley. But James is not the pushover he seems to be. He claims not to be afraid of anything and has a range of insults that render Barry Bagsley speechless. For Barry, this means war and Ishmael is not only stuck in the middle but has to confront his own fears when he is persuaded to join the school debating team.

The author used to be a teacher and this shows in the way he writes about students, teachers and life in school. If you enjoy a fun story and characters with ‘all the bantz’ (can’t believe I just typed that phrase) then you definitely need to read this.