Tag Archives: YA fiction

Whispers in the Graveyard by Theresa Breslin – Carnegie Medal winner

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Whispers in the Graveyard Book CoverWhispers in the Graveyard by the Scottish author Theresa Breslin won the Carnegie Medal in 1994.

In this book the author writes about a multiple of serious problems that Solomon, the main character has to deal with. He is having trouble at school, and at home. His mother has just recently left the family home after having given Solomon a choice of staying with his father or leaving with her. He stays with his father mainly because with his mother leaving there will be nobody to look after his father when he goes on his frequent alcoholic binges. But it means that Solomon doesn’t even have clean clothes to wear, so he’s smelly and unpopular at school. His teacher Mr Frame particularly dislikes him and chooses to ridicule him in the classroom, he’s just a bully. Peter, his best friend tries to protect Solomon from Frame, and lets Solly copy his homework, but he spends less and less time at school, choosing to hide away in an old graveyard.

He has found a sort of hidey-hole that he can gain access to by climbing up a rowan tree, used in the past for keeping witches away of course. When Solomon sees strangers looking around the graveyard he realises that his peaceful haven is under threat. With work going on in the graveyard it looks like something evil has been released.

It seems that this is one of those love it or hate it books. It’s really well written, but if you don’t like a bit of spookiness, or the real problems that some youngsters have in their lives such as bullying, family break up, alcoholic parents AND dyslexia then you might want to give this one a miss. However it’s a sad fact that a lot of young people have to cope with terrible problems that would fell many an adult. So although this isn’t exactly a jolly read, I think it might have helped some readers along the way. I enjoyed it, it has some light-hearted moments.

Astercote by Penelope Lively – The 1970 Club

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Astercote by Penelope Lively was first published in 1970.  It was aimed at young teenagers – probably, but is good for any age.

Sister and brother Mair and Peter Jenkins are living in Charlton Underwood, a Cotswolds village. They’ve moved there recently as their father has taken up a teaching post, so it’s all new to them. When their dog runs off into the woods they chase after him, although they’ve been told not to go into the woods.

That’s when they discover that the woodland had once been a village. The children discover that the Black Death had overcome Astercote and the area has been completely taken over by nature, but you can still see some of the cottage ruins. It’s all slightly spooky,  or maybe just atmospheric. Events take a strange turn when some of the locals get ill and are convinced that the Black Death has returned.

This one wasn’t quite what I expected, for some reason I had assumed that it was going to be historical fiction, but I enjoyed it.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Let the Circle be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor

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Roll of Thunder, Here My Cry and Let the Circle be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor were published in 1976 and 1981 in the USA.  I read editions from the Puffin Plus series. Thanks Jennifer for these ones, I hadn’t even heard of the author before.

The first one begins in 1933 in America’s deep south. Mississippi.  It’s a tough time for farmers but particularly for black farmers, but the Logan family are a bit better off than most of their neighbours who are only sharecroppers. The Logans actually own their land, but the wealthy white landowner who owns the land adjoining theirs is determined to get their land for himself.

Cassie Logan is the only girl in her family, she has three brothers and lives with her parents and her grandmother. Her father is having to work away from home for most of the time though, so that he can earn money on the railroad, that money pays the annual tax which is due on his land.

Life is difficult for the children too, just getting to school in the morning is a nightmare as they have to walk on what is often a muddy track, having to try to dodge the white children’s bus as the driver is determined to splash them with mud while the white children cheer. Life for the black people is just one humiliation after another, but it’s the night riders (Ku Klux Klan) who terrify the black people. Just a rumour of ‘disrespect’ from a black person could end up with them being lynched or burnt out. Cassie has a lot to learn, and none of it makes sense. This one won the Newbery Medal.

Let the Circle be Unbroken is set two years later. Things are even worse for the black people now, the Depression is biting deeper and the ‘solutions’ put forward by the government are only making things worse, especially for sharecroppers. Granger, the main white landowner is conning the Logan family out of money which was due to them from the government and Cassie’s mother has lost her teaching job.

Mr Morrison has become part of the Logan household, he’s over seven feet tall and Cassie’s father won’t worry so much about his family while he is away on the railroad work. But it’s young T.J. Avery who gets into big trouble. He’s a young black neighbour and is rather full of himself. When a couple of white lads befriend him you just know it’s going to end in tears.

Stacey Logan, the eldest son decides that he is going to leave and find work elsewhere, but he just runs off and they hear nothing from him, everyone fears the worst.

These are both really good reads, if somewhat depressing, as in some ways things don’t seem to be getting a lot better for the black people in the deep south of the US.

Gideon Ahoy! by William Mayne – 20 Books of Summer

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Gideon Ahoy! by William Mayne was published in 1987. Gideon is a teenager and he’s profoundly deaf, so he doesn’t have much in the way of speech. He seems to be mentally handicapped but he would probably be described as being severely autistic nowadays. The whole household revolves around Gideon who makes a lot of noise which of course he can’t hear. His younger sister Eva gets somewhat neglected because of the situation, not that she minds. There are also two  younger children, called Tansy and Mercury. Their mother has a hard life because she’s more or less a one parent family, the father is in the Merchant Navy and spends most of his time away at sea.

Gideon gets a job working on a canal barge, he’s good at the work and is popular with the people who pay to go on the boat trips, but it’s a mystery what happenes to his pay. He never brings any home although his employer pays him.  Gideon’s confidence rises and the atmosphere in the family begins to improve, although Tansy and Mercury are still a handful, brimful of energy. But it turns out that Gideon’s job is just for the summer and he can’t understand that the barge isn’t used in the cold months.

This is a lovely story with a happy ending, just what I needed really.

Apparently William Mayne was convicted of child abuse and his books have been removed from libraries and possibly even most bookshops but I bought my copy of this book in a secondhand bookshop in Callander, Stirlingshire, and when I bought it the woman said, ah that’s a lovely book. I don’t know if she knew of the history of William Mayne. However it set me thinking. Are some authors ‘too big’ to be cancelled the way some banks or companies are deemed to be too big to be allowed to fail?

I’ve always wondered why Gary Glitter’s records have been cancelled but Michael Jackson’s are still played regularly on the radio and TV.

Likewise William Mayne’s books have been removed from shelves but Alice Munro is still feted despite her husband admitting that he sexually abused her daughter from the age of nine for years, and she blamed her daughter instead of getting rid of her husband, the girl’s step-father.  You can read about it in a Guardian article here.  I find that more shocking.

Night Fires by Joan Lingard – 20 Books of Summer 2024

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Night Fires by the Scottish author Joan Lingard was first published by Hamish Hamilton in 1993. It was obviously influenced by the political unrest and revolutions which were going on around the late 1980s, particularly the fall of the Romanian Ceausescu regime.  It’s one of my 20 Books of Summer.

Lara and Nik are teenagers who live in an orphanage on the outskirts of town. The orphanage is run by an evil man and woman that they nickname Dracula and The Crow. When Nik and Lara see that they are loading up their vehicle with as much stuff as they can it’s obvious that Dracula and The Crow intend to leave the orphanage, fearing for their lives. They can see and smell that mobs have set the city on fire, the people have had enough, they’ve snapped and they’re fighting back, hoping to rid themselves of the brutal and suffocating dictatorship that they’ve been living under.

Lara and Nik decide to see what’s going on for themselves and Bibi, a woman who works in the orphanage  gives them the address of her sister in the city, they can go to her if they find themselves in trouble – which they do.

This is a good read, aimed at young teenagers I think.

 

 

 

The Runaway Summer by Nina Bawden – 20 Books of Summer

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The Runaway Summer by Nina Bawden was first published in 1969 and it’s one of my 20 Books of Summer. The book is/was aimed at older children.

Mary’s parents are getting divorced and during the school holidays she has been sent to live with her Aunt Alice and grandfather who live on the coast, while everything is sorted out. Mary is premanently angry about the whole situation, she has no friends in the area and she knows that she’s behaving very badly towards Aunt Alice and Grandfather, but annoyingly they are very understanding, which only makes Mary feel worse!

In a fit of rage Mary runs out of the house and heads for the sea front where she gets into more trouble as she’s so angry she decides to steal some sweets, but her shoplifting has been seen by young twin sisters who have run away from their older brother Simon. He’s the eldest of a large chaotic family and their father is a policeman!

On one of her trips to the beach Mary watches a small boat coming towards it, when it reaches the shingle two dark men jump out and help a young boy out too. It all seems strange, none of them are dressed for a trip in a boat and they have suitcases, when they get on the beach the boatman sails off again. The young boy has a damaged arm and as the men make their way along the beach, he’s left behind and Mary can see that he’s crying.

But in no time the men are picked up by the police, and Mary decides that she must help the young boy and hide him from the authorities, but she’ll need help from Simon.

As you would expect fromm Nina Bawden this is a really well-written book, but I found myself checking the details about when it was first published and I must say that I find it fairly depressing that she was writing about illegal immigrants in small boats – and it’s still a huge problem and very much in the news 55 years later.

It turns out that Krishna had been flying from Kenya to London to stay with his uncle, but there was a deadline to do it legally and due to plane delays he had missed it, and so began all his troubles.

My  20 Books of Summer list is here. This is the sixth book that I’ve read on the list.

 

 

 

Green Willow’s Secret by Eileen Dunlop

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Green Willow’s Secret by the Scottish author Eileen Dunlop was published in 1993. This book is meant for YA readers but is enjoyable to people of all ages I’m sure.

Kit had lived in Edinburgh with her parents and older sister, but a family tragedy has led to the father travelling to Australia and Kit and her mother moving to Maddimoss, a rural area. Kit isn’t settling in well and when her teacher tells the class about a Japanese exhibition she has been to the other pupils tell her that there’s a Japanese garden where Kit lives. Kit knows nothing about it but later when she gets home she does some exploring and discovers the remains of a very neglected but wonderful Japanese garden.

There’s a photograph of the garden in the house they are living in, as it was in its heyday, and there are people in the photo, including a Japanese man in traditional dress, but strangely he appears and disappears in the photo. There’s something slightly spooky about the garden. When Kit meets Daniel who is also not a local they decide to work on the garden together.

There’s a lot more to this book, but I don’t want to say much more other than that I enjoyed it. As it happens there is a Japanese Garden at Cowden, not that far from where we live and a hop and a skip from where Eileen Dunlop lived in the wee town of Dollar. I’m sure that is where she got the idea from because the garden at Cowden fell into neglect and was vandalised in the 1960s. As in the book the original Japanese gardener is buried in the local churchyard. You can read the garden’s history and see more photos here. It has fairly recently been brought back to perfection and is open to the public, obviously it’s a business too nowadays so you have to pay an entrance fee. It’s quite a few years since we visited, (you can see my blogposts on our visits here) I seem to remember that there was a small play area for youngsters who may not be so enamoured of the beautiful surroundings.

 

Operation Sippacik by Rumer Godden

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Operation Sippacik by Rumer Godden was published in 1969. The setting is Cyprus. Rumer Godden was on holiday there when she was told the story of a brave donkey and she decided to write it.

The men of the 27th Battery Royal Artillery were part of a United Nations force who were in Cyprus as part of a peace keeping force, trying to stop the Greek and Turkish Cypriots from killing each other.

Sippacik is a very small donkey which is owned by a small boy called Rifat, he had witnessed the donkey’s birth and had a strong bond with her, so when Rifat’s grandfather sold the donkey to the British Army Rifat was not happy, but money was scarce, particularly as Rifat’s father was not around to help on the family farm.  Rifat’s father has been a bit of a local hero, but he had been taken away by the Greek Cypriot police.

Rifat has been dodging school and when the soldiers realise that they can’t cope with the donkey’s awkward temperament it’s arranged for Rifat to live at the army camp and look after Sippacik. They get involved in a dangerous adventure.

This book was probably aimed at ten year olds, it’s entertaining and educational. I bought it just because it was written by Rumer Godden. She seems to have been inspired to write wherever she went on holiday, or moved to. In her old age she moved to Scotland to live to be close to her daughter, and I was impressed by the way that she obviously threw herself into the culture of Scotland and even managed to write in dialect in her book for children The Dragon of Og.

Our Castle by the Sea by Lucy Strange

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Our Castle by the Sea by Lucy Strange was published in 2019. The setting is the south-east coast of England during World War 2.

On the first day of the war Magda came home from school with a split lip and a swollen eye. She had been in a fight and her younger sister Petra is shocked. The girls live with their parents right on the coast as their father is a lighthouse keeper, but their mother originally came from Germany and some people aren’t happy about that. They live in a cottage adjoining the lighthouse.

Of course the lighthouse lamps are no longer in use, but the glass still has to be polished up, just in case an important convoy has to be guided briefly.  The foghorn is the only way of alerting shipping to the coast now.

They all love living there, it’s ideal as there’s plenty to sketch, even their mother sketches, and that’s what causes a problem. She’s regarded as being an ‘enemy alian’ and under suspicion of being a spy and as Churchill had said “collar the lot” including people who had come to Britain to escape the Nazis. she is taken away, they’re all devastated.  She is accused of sending information to Germany, but the real enemy is much closer to the authorities than they would expect.

I really enjoyed this one which is I suppose aimed at older children (YA) but like all good writing it’s entertaining no matter what age the reader is. The story includes local legends such as standing stones, generational family strife, unresolved problems from the earlier Great War and the blot of home grown Fascism in Britain.

I bought my copy of this book from the internet, something I don’t do all that often, and I was chuffed when I realised that my copy of the book had been signed by the author.

 

A Flute in Mayferry Street by Eileen Dunlop

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A Flute in Mayferry Street by Scottish author Eileen Dunlop was first published in 1976.

Marion and Colin Ramsay live with their mother in a Georgian house in Edinburgh’s New Town, their father is dead and life is difficult, there’s never enough money.  The house they live in has been in the Ramsay family for generations and their mother doesn’t really know too much about the history of the house. Everything in the house had belonged originally to the previous Ramsays.  Marion has left school, she had an accident and damaged her spine and is now paralysed. The doctors had been hopeful that given time her damaged nerves would mend, but it has been a few years now and she’s giving up hope and is sinking into a depression.  She has also become scared of being in the house on her own as she keeps hearing someone playing what sounds like a flute – in the empty house. She won’t go out in her wheelchair and her only friends are the lodgers, a young couple whose rent helps with the family budget.

The housework is proving to be never ending for Mrs Ramsay and she asks Colin to dust and sort through the books in the bookcase, it’s full of things that have just been stuck on the shelves too, and shouldn’t be there. Marion helps too and that’s when she finds an intersting letter dated 1914.  This leads to a bit of a treasure hunt although they don’t know what they’re looking for.  Marion is interested in life again.

The blurb on the back says:

A Flute in Mayferry Street has all the ingredients of a classic ghost story, mixed with the harsh realities of a life set apart, and its implications for those around. An inspiring tale of the magic of dreams and the power of the supernatural.

I really enjoyed it.