Books for children
Jake’s father is abroad on a job-enhancing course, his mother is in hospital, so his gran comes to stay. The first signs of gran’s confusion appear with the sandwiches she makes for Jake — cheese and beetroot, marmite and banana. But it is her increasingly erratic behaviour and forgetfulness that gives Jake cause for concern. He tries to cover up her inconsistencies from friends and neighbours but, as her condition worsens, he is out of his depth. Help comes in the form of a young girl who befriends Jake and manages to calm the old lady. While trying to find out more about this enigmatic girl, Jake is drawn into a curious route of discovery concerning Gran’s past. The credible characters and the absorbing story line will hold the reader’s imagination right through. Though it must be said the flow of the story is hampered by breaking the boy’s thoughts into italics. Suitable for age 10 and upwards.
In Dublin of the 1300s Kai and her brother Edward are rescued from a life of begging on the medieval streets — the one to sing in the Christ Church choir, and the other to work as an apprentice in a stonemason’s yard. Both siblings encounter hostility in their new surroundings from better-off students and apprentices. Kai struggles to hide her true identity — ie, that she is a girl and consequently ineligible to either sing in the choir or enter the cloister. The arrival of the plague in Dublin brings terror and loss to her new community, and her struggle for survival is exacerbated by the increasing hostility of chorister Roland who resents his own virtual abandonment by his parents. The tensions between the youngsters are credibly played out against the backdrop of fear and the urge to lay irrational blame for the plague on the most unlikely characters. The dramatised accounts of life in Christchurch should nudge the reader to visit the building to see and understand the significance the places featured in the novel. Suitable for age 12 and upwards.
