Chinglish

Chinglish by Sue Cheung

Book of the Week: 29 September 2019

Illustrations by Sue Cheung

The illustrated diary of Jo Kwan whose family move to a cramped flat above their Chinese takeaway in Coventry in 1984. Jo and her younger sister, Bonny, live with their mum who speaks very little English and their father, who is bad-tempered and erratic. Simon, their older brother, lives with grandparents a few streets away. Despite not enjoying school, except for art lessons, Jo finds friendship with fellow outsider, Tina, who is a goth. She is unwilling to introduce Tina to her family in case she discovers how chaotic her home life is – her dad likes to give their pet goats piggybacks around the garden for instance. Most of Jo’s story is packed with quirky characters and some funny and relatable incidents, but there is a dark side to her family life that only comes to the fore in the final third of the book. Despite the funny, down-to-earth style and the Wimpy Kid type drawings, this is an honest and upsetting story that the youngest readers may find a bit disturbing.

It has some themes in commons with The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend, Anita and Me by Meera Syal and The Boy with the Topknot by Sathnam Sanghera.

Catching Teller Crow

Catching Teller Crow by Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina

Book of the Week: 22 September 2019

Photography by Shutterstock

A short and powerful read by brother and sister writers, Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina, set in a small Australian town. Grieving detective Michael Teller is attempting to get to the bottom of a series of murders and a fire in a children’s home that may have been started deliberately. He is being watched over by the ghost of his dead daughter, Beth, who was killed in a road accident. Only he can see and communicate with her. When they visit a hospital to interview a potential witness, a girl called Isobel Catching, they hear a strange and confusing story that may be a fantasy or may tell them something important about the dreadful events that have taken place.

Beth narrates most of the story in prose, whilst Isobel’s experiences are in free verse. This mix of styles and interweaving of  a tense, real-life crime mystery with dream-like sequences, makes for a compelling and unusual book.

Boy in the Tower

Boy in the Tower by Polly Ho-Yen

Book of the Week: 15 September 2019

Artwork by Daniel Davies

Ade feels safe on the seventeenth floor of his tower block. He likes the fact that his friend, Gaia, lives on the seventeenth floor of another block he can see from his window. He is worried about his mum who won’t leave their flat and who barely leaves her room, but is determined to do what he can to help. He used to like to watch the world from his window – the bustle, the traffic and the comings and goings of his neighbours. But then, buildings began falling down and people were killed. Strange, blue-tinged plants appeared in the rubble emitting deadly spores and normal life was suspended. Ade is marooned in his tower block and his mum is too ill to help. Will he be able to survive until help arrives or will the deadly Bluchers (the plants) surround and destroy his home too?

This is a tale about friendship, family and survival and how children deal with an adult world and is often confusing and frightening. If you enjoy the scary element of life-threatening plants, you can look forward to reading the classic The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham when you are a little older.

D.O.G.S.

D.O.G.S. by M.A. Bennett

Book of the Week: 8 September 2019

Cover design by Alexandra Allden

I nearly didn’t pick this because the central character, Greer, doesn’t like the work of our most famous Old Edwardian. However, S.T.A.G.S. won the Warwickshire Book Award back in March and this sequel is just as gripping.

We are back in the priviledged environment of St Aidan the Great School just where S.T.A.G.S. left off, partly because Greer strongly disapproves of sequels that start three years later than the original. She, Nel and Shafeen are now starting their final year at school and although Greer is still brooding over the death of Henry de Warlencourt, she is looking forward to a new school year. As part of her A-level Drama course she has to stage a play written before 1660 and has already ruled out Shakespeare. One evening, a sheaf of yellowing pages is pushed under the door of her room; these appear to be the beginnings of a play called The Isle of Dogs by Ben Jonson. When she takes the papers to her Drama teacher, Abbott Ridley, he is stunned. The play, written in 1597, was performed but then suppressed, meaning all copies were burned and the theatres closed. What could it have contained to make it so dangerous? When the next set of pages appear under Greer’s door, the Abbott suggests she stage the play for her A-level course. But who is feeding her pages, are they genuine and who is sending her cryptic messages about the recent past on Instagram?

Expect plenty of mystery and tension in a plot that skilfully mixes an ancient puzzle, and fascinating details about Elizabethan theatre and politics, with the elements that made S.T.A.G.S. such an enjoyable thriller.