Blog and Tweets Latest Blog: Farewell Tour of a Terminal Optimist shortlisted for the Cheshire Schools Book Awards! JPG' alt='Children in a school watching an author event' x="0" y="0" height="350px" width="350px" style="transform: scaleX(. Only problem was I could not put it down - all household chores, children and meals were forgotten until I could get my Connor and Skeates fix.

Lorn is helped by school librarian, Nadia, and his friends, to cope with bullying at school and the horrors of his abusive step dad, Harry Bains.There’s nothing like withholding information to fire a lad’s determination so he drops everything including his cancer medication to go on this quest. I love Skeates and Connors friendship and I also love Skeates character development , under the surface he’s very kind and caring and just really really nice. With little income and no way to live off their poor land, Maggie tries to provide for her family the way her father always had - with his hunting rifle and whatever animals the forest would provide. The plot jumps from one wild adventure to the next, the two main characters never really open up enough, until it is too late, to make you care about them and wild it is a fun read, there seems to be something missing. His sister died, and his dad's in prison (although his mom refuses to let him visit or even tell him why his dad's been incarcerated for the last 9 years).

I met John on holiday in Scotland and consequently read his book which one of us daughters persuaded him to give me. The Scottish Teenage Book Prize celebrates the very best in Scottish teen fiction, and aims to encourage reading for pleasure amongst teenagers. But when his clever older brother, Musa, gets mixed up with some young political activists, everything changes .Heather agrees to a group camping holiday with Dougie and his friends because she's desperate to get closer to him. Brilliant Scottish Book Trust video trailer winner Sophie McIntosh from St Joseph's Academy Ayrshire https://www. Some of the Scottish slang was unclear (mostly because I don’t hail from Scotland), but I was able to figure it out with context clues. The real beauty of this book is that it's about two boys on an adventure who form an unlikely alliance and "never quit. He decides to investigate his island home and accepts an ancient challenge: he who jumps the Bonnie Laddie's Leap wins a fortune.

I liked the characters Connor and Skeates, and enjoyed the evolution of their relationship which was really sweet. After he fights at school, while his mother has a breakdown and ends up at the hospital, he is sent to a government housing for minors thing along with his sworn enemy, the boy he fought with, Skeates.I have never read a book with such realistic representation of what it is like to live here , the culture , the language, the people , the description of the places they go. Interesting and took unexpected turns, however had a lot of 'coincidences' which seemed a little bit unrealistic to me. Despite their former rivalry, Connor and Skeates form an alliance and set out on a road trip (of sorts) to see Connor’s dad in prison with a little money and without Connor’s seven medications he takes twice a daily to keep his cancer at bay. Alone and penniless after his father is killed in a cotton mill accident, fourteen-year-old William faces the rest of his childhood in a brutal workhouse.