Monthly Archives: September 2020

The Soup Movement

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The Soup Movement by Ben Davis

Book of the Week: 27 September 2020

Illustration by Julia Christians

We first meet thirteen-year-old Jordan when he is up a tree trying to rescue a cat. Despite not being keen on cats or heights and frightening his over-protective mum, he gives it a try; and Jordan is definitely a trier. His family have moved to the quiet town of Pondstead to give him a healthier life after being ill in hospital. He’s missing his friends, particularly the one he met when he was in hospital, and is finding it hard to fit in. His dad is being overly-hearty, his mum overly-protective and his sister Abi overly-everything. He is doing his best to settle down and ward of memories of his past life, but just as he thinks he has made a few friends, he antagonises a boy called Will in his class and, by offering some soup to a homeless man in the park, starts a whole new chain of events that angers as many people as it helps. Will his life ever get back on an even keel?

There is lots to enjoy in this warm-hearted story that deals with some serious and emotional issues whilst always keeping its sense of humour.

Ben Davis is the author of the Private Blog of Joe Cowley series and you can find out more about him here.

Other great fiction that deals with homelessness includes No Fixed Address by Susin Nielsen and Sofa Surfer by Malcolm Duffy.

The Rules

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The Rules by Tracy Darnton

Book of the Week: 20 September 2020

Cover images by Shutterstock

It’s December and Amber is at the bowling plaza with Julie, her social worker. Although Amber feels her life has improved since being at Beechwood, a boarding school, Julie is saying they are having problems placing her with a foster family over the holidays. Amber responds with her usual defensive sarcasm until Julie says a letter has been received from Amber’s father who is trying to get in touch. Julie thinks this is good news because she, like everyone else, has been taken in by him. Amber, however, knows better. She knows how her father operates and that she has to take her ‘grab-and-go bag’ and leave immediately. She gets a train and heads north to a holiday home owned by some previous foster parents.

Amber’s father is a ‘prepper’or survivalist, but is also controlling and abusive. Amber’s mum became mentally ill under the pressure and violence of their life and had to be hospitalized. Amber managed to escape, but her father has been searching for her for the last two years in between trips to see his family and contacts in the States. Now he is trying to hunt her down. When she hears the creak of upstairs floorboards in her holiday refuge, she gets ready for fight and flight, but it turns out to be a young guy who shared her foster home for a brief spell. Josh lives on his wits and by a combination of busking and charity and is as cheerful and easy-going as Amber is tense and organized. He seems to want to tag along, but will he be more of a liability than an asset?

The cleverly-structured game of cat and mouse plays out in bleak, windswept countryside and isolated villages with the threat of discovery a constant source of tension. The grim situation is regularly lightened by Josh’s playful presence, and the uncertainty of his and Amber’s fate will probably ensure you read this in a single sitting.

A must read for fans of Tracy Darnton’s ‘The Truth About Lies’ or books by M.A. Bennett or Sue Wallman.

Girl. Boy. Sea.

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Girl. Boy. Sea. by Chris Vick

Book of the Week: 13 September 2020

Image: Shutterstock

Welcome to the first book of the week of the new academic year.

A stormy sea and a shipwreck always make a gripping beginning to a story. A group of teenagers are twelve nautical miles north of the Canary Islands when a squall hits them. Bill fails to get into the life raft when the Pandora takes on water, but he manages to throw some supplies in a bag and escape in the tender before it sinks.

After three days, he writes in his notebook: ‘This isn’t a place. This is nowhere. I’m alone, in a rowboat, in the Atlantic. I’m 15. I’m not sure I’ll make 16.’ The odds of surviving alone with some tins of food, three plastic bottles, a notebook, a pen and a knife, seem slim and Bill veers between, hope, anger and terror. Then, after a few days, he sees a plastic barrel bobbing on the waves supporting what he thinks is a dead body or a pile of rags. When he gets close, he sees it is a girl about his own age who tells him in halting English that she is Amazigh and from Morroco and her name is Aya. How she ended up adrift on the ocean is something she is unwilling to discuss and anyway, there is the pressing problem of survival. Will they be able to stay alive until they are rescued? Is rescue even a possibility?

This compelling adventure is about so much more than people’s ability to survive under dangerous circumstances. It is about the role of stories in our lives, the threat to people trying to preserve their way of life against the competing pressures of the modern world and a memorable picture of our oceans and its inhabitants.

Chris Vick has written two adventures for slightly older readers: ‘Kook’ and ‘Storms’ which feature life by the sea, surfing and plenty of action as well as some romance.

If you enjoy a good castaway story, try Island of the Blue Dolphins or Kensuke’s Kingdom or The Cay or even the original Robinson Crusoe.