I owe Sarah a huge apology! This review was supposed to hit the site on September 30th – unfortunately my daughter, being no respecter of the best laid plans of mice and men decided to arrive a bit early (an dmad those plans go awry).
Sarah I am sorry! In creating India Smythe you have gifted the world with one of the funniest protagonists since… well… ever! She fits in with Bridget Jones and Georgia Nicolson! I already knew that you were a brilliant author, The Territory trilogy taught me that; but pivoting from a futuristic dystopian eco-thriller to a contemporary comedy, well honestly that caught me off-guard.
Writing comedy is hard, writing actually funny comedy is akin to capturing lightning in a bottle. India Smythe is Sarah’s lightning in a bottle!
India is a wonderful protagonist, flawed yet engaging, with some really wicked one-liners including: It’s never good to stand next to perfection. Especially when perfection is a complete bitch.
Her voice as narrator came through with crystal clarity while introducing the reader to her family, her life and her friends, frenemies and potential love interests.
This is very much a teen novel but suitable for readers of most ages, the writing is so sharp you may cut yourself on the humour. Trite as it may sound, this is a book that, once you have started reading you will find very hard to put down.
If you work in a library then this is a book you need to press into the hands of your teen readers. It is the perfect antidote to the grey, grim times in which we find ourselves. India Smythe Stands Up is light, funny and will swiftly carry you through India’s travails. I challenge readers of any age to not find some part of themselves in India or her family, and empathise with her as they laugh uproariously at her misadventures.
14 -year-old India Smythe has caught the eye of Ennis, the hottest boy at St Joseph’s. But nothing’s ever easy when you’re dealing with horrific teachers, a dad who’s convinced every boy is a ‘sex pest’, a best friend who talks you into embarrassing makeovers to look good on Instagram and the odd kissing-induced hospitalisation. And does India even want Ennis? Or should she risk social relegation and go for the orchestra geek with the extra-long forehead who she actually enjoys talking to?
India Smythe Stands Up was written by Sarah Govett and is published by Marotte Books a new publisher specialising in comedy fiction. It is available now!
You need to get yourself a copy! Trust me I am a Librarian!
Jake and the other finalists in a story-writing competition have been invited to a stately home for a tour like no other. As their guide leads them through grand rooms, hidden nooks and magnificent grounds, they are about to hear the stories of seven ghosts who haunt these walls. But strange shapes and shadows follow Jake as he journeys through the house. The tour guide’s behaviour becomes ever more suspicious. With each tale that he hears, Jake begins to feel more uneasy, and soon he will discover that something is very, very wrong …
Seven Ghosts, written and illustrated by Chris Priestley
We at TeenLibrarian are big fans of both Barrington Stoke and Chris Priestley, so when I was given the chance to have a gallery of images from his latest novella for them I jumped at it! Seven Ghosts is a brilliantly creepy short story, telling seven short stories of ghosts haunting a particular house, that would be brilliant to read aloud to a class of any age (from 8+) or at bedtime (but you may need the lights on afterwards). Enjoy the slideshow…
Beano has today launched “Beano Booktopia” – a new book subscription service for kids offering newly published books across a wide range of authors and genres.
The tailor-made programme will include fiction and non-fiction books specifically chosen by Beano experts based on the individual child’s given interests and reading ability.
Booktopia encourages children to expand their reading horizons with new books that fans of the Beano will love. The books selected for the Booktopia service follow the winning Beano formula that has won over children for three generations by combining spot-on humour, captivating stories, relatable characters and amazing visual storytelling.
How Booktopia works
1. Pick a plan
Choose one of Beano Booktopia subscriptions with a book arriving every month for either 3, 6, 12 or 24 months – starting from £24.99f5f
2. Name a kid
Name the lucky kid who will become part of Beano’s Booktopia club
3. Booktopia quiz
Children answer a few simple questions outlining their interests. What do they love? Fact or fiction? Adventure or mystery? Books with pictures as well as text?
4. The adventure begins
Beano masterminds hand-pick a book a month to match each kid’s passions and reading ability
Multiple studies have shown that children who read for enjoyment do significantly better at school than their peers and make more progress in maths, vocabulary and spelling, making reading for pleasure one of the most effective ways of helping children to reach their full potential.
Emma Scott, CEO of Beano Studios, said: “Beano has been making kids laugh for over 80 years whilst all the while secretly helping them on the first crucial step on their reading journey. Thousands of parents tell us “Beano is the only thing my kids will read” and we’re constantly awed by the British creative icons who credit the Beano with getting them reading, writing, drawing and even standing up on stage! Beano Booktopia offers kids a monthly chance to immerse themselves independently in amazing stories with the Beano seal of approval to help launch a lifetime love of reading.”
The game of war is always rigged . . . Kellen and Reichis are settling into their lives as protectors of the young queen. For the first time Kellen feels as if he’s becoming the kind of man that his mentor Ferius had wanted him to be. Even Reichis has come to appreciate having a noble purpose – so long as no one minds him committing the occasional act of theft from the royal treasury. But thousands of miles away a war is brewing that the Argosi always warned could destroy the continent. An unexpected source brings word that there’s one way Kellen can prevent a hundred years of bloodshed, and all it requires is a little murder . . . Now Kellen and his sister Shalla find themselves on opposite sides, and neither love nor loyalty can protect them from the choices they must make.
Crownbreaker by Sebastien De Castell, HotKey Books
Crownbreaker is the 6th and final book in the Spellslinger series
I failed to keep up with this series after the first two, I loved them but then CKG got in the way, but I’m regretting that now as the 6th and final book was published this month. HotKey Books have very kindly offered a full set of the books as a prize for a TeenLibrarian reader, so I set up my very first Rafflecopter giveaway! Follow the link to enter, and good luck!
Over the past few years, Keanu Reeves has emerged as one of the most popular and intriguing actors working in Hollywood. He has been the subject of a number of memes, rumours and heart-warming tales from a variety of sources.
A while ago I came up with the idea of Keanu Reads on twitter (I am probably not the only person that thought of that). It was a two second chuckle that refused to leave my brain. Recently I noticed that he has acted in a number of movies that are based on novels (& two that were turned into graphic novels) and the idea of creating a display based on his works was born.
MOTHER TONGUE is the standalone follow-up to the award-winning and critically acclaimed THE WORDSMITH (published in North America as THE LIST) by Galway native Patricia Forde. After global warming came the Melting. Then came Ark. The new dictator of Ark wants to silence speech for ever. But Letta is the wordsmith, tasked with keeping words alive. Out in the woods, she and the rebels secretly teach children language, music and art. Now there are rumours that babies are going missing. When Letta makes a horrifying discovery, she has to find a way to save the children of Ark – even if it is at the cost of her own life.
Mother Tongue by Patricia Forde, cover illustration by Elissa Webb
Little Island have been publishing some great books, unfortunately all ineligible for CKG because they don’t have offices outside of Eire, but definitely worth reading! Mother Tongue, and predecessor The Wordsmith, are both brilliantly devised stories based in a society founded at the end of the world, after flood waters have risen. Noah, the founder of Ark, has decreed that words were to blame for the situation people find themselves in – empty promises and lies of people in power, words instead of action – so all except the most functional 500 words are banned from use. The Wordsmith may store unused words until people can be trusted with them again (but will they ever?). Obviously the idea of storing words appealed to me greatly, so I jumped at the chance of being on the blog tour. The author Patricia Forde wrote a piece about Words for us:
The Need to Keep Words Alive.
I love dictionaries. As a child, I was often to be found reading those impressive tomes looking for new words, big words, words to impress. Nowadays, as a writer, I still use dictionaries but now to look for smaller words, simpler words, words that are precise. But what if we start to lose words? If we don’t have a word for something can we conceive of it? Can we imagine it? And maybe, more importantly, do we still value that which it represents? There was a thundering brouhaha some years ago when the Oxford Junior Dictionary removed words like kingfisher, acorn and cowslip from its list and replaced them with words like broadband, blog and voice mail. The dictionary is aimed at seven year olds. People felt that the dictionary was adding to the problem of children being alienated from nature. It seemed that the dictionary didn’t value the thrush, the weasel or the wren as much as it valued the grey world of bureaucracy. Committee, common sense and bullet points all had a place while much of the natural world was sent packing.
But, the dictionary argued, the words they chose to include were the words children were using. They had tracked contemporary usage and reflected their findings in their list of words.
How sad that is. As adults, we have to tolerate a diet of grey sludge when it comes to language. We have to talk about Brexit and hard drives and listen to people going on about journeys they’ve made that aren’t journeys at all, and hear them going forward with this that and the other thing and telling us all about it in bullet points. But children?
Their language should reflect the sacred time that we call childhood. I believe that it should be full of beavers and liquorice and droves of dwarves, elves and goblins. We need to keep those words alive because we need to keep that sense of wonder and awe alive.
Many of the words removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary had to do with nature. In this time of environmental crisis surely we need to make children more aware of nature and their natural habitat. It should concern us that if children no longer speak about bluebells or brambles it may be because children are becoming increasingly solitary and urban.
Every word in every language represents an entire archaeology and a history of what has gone before. I shudder to imagine a world like the one I created for The Wordsmith and Mother Tongue. A world where people have access to only five hundred words. Letta, my protagonist, says at one stage:
How can we dream if we don’t have words?
I would also ask how can we think? Words give us precision. In this chaotic world we’ve never needed clear thinking more than we do now. We need our leaders to use language like a laser rather than a slurry spreader. We need to cut through the noise, refuse to accept philosophy that can be written as a tweet because it has no complexity, and build a longer list of words – a list that includes all ideas, all languages, all dictionaries. Let’s make a thundering brouhaha about that!
Mother Tongue, the sequel to The Wordsmith, has just been published by Little Island and they are both available from their website (thankyou for sending me copies of both!). Founded by Ireland’s first Children’s Laureate, Siobhán Parkinson, Little Island Books has been publishing books for children and teenagers since 2010. They specialise in publishing new Irish writers and illustrators, and also have a commitment to publishing books in translation.
For a sneak peek of Mother Tongue, download this free sample:
October will bring us this really powerful collection of poetry for teenagers, by young transgender poet Jay Hulme. Troika asked him to create a semi-autobiographical narrative, and included are reworked poems he wrote while at high school. He has said that when considering what to include he realised that what he’d wanted as a teenager, and what he wanted to give to teenagers, was the truth, and devised a two part story.
Being trans means that my life does feel almost like it comes in two halves. I have lived in this world as two people: The person I was before; angry, confused, violent, trying to find out what was wrong, trying to find my place in a world that didn’t want me. And the person I am now; proud, confident, at peace with myself, trying to forge a future to be proud of. With that in mind, I divided the book into two parts. The first half is filled with problems, anger, and confusion, and the poems in turn are often filled with industrial and urban imagery, dark, and claustrophobic. The second half is filled with hope, change, and growth – the poems here are often filled with natural imagery, they are lighter, softer, quieter – kinder.
No issue is out of bounds, anything he thought of as a teenager is included, some induce anger, some tears, some snorts of recognition, some a smile…and some all of the above. If I had to pick one favourite from each part, the one that made me stop and stare without moving on for a few minutes was his response to the Islamophobic attack at Christchurch earlier this year. That is towards the end of part 1, which is full of rage and sadness and despair at injustice. In part 2, possibly verging on soppy (which is very not me and yet it had me crying happy tears on a bus) is ‘Just the Small Things’ about the every day things that make you happy. Bonus mention though for ‘The Meaning of Stories’, which may resonate with many a reader, particularly I’d think readers of this blog (thank you so much Jay for letting me post it in full here):
THE MEANING OF STORIES
Perhaps it is true that none of my heroes exist, summed up on a list entitled “fictional characters”. My life lessons come from the mouths of people paid to pretend they are someone they’re not, but I can’t forget what they have taught me.
Because when words mean something, they stay, no matter where they came from. So who cares if I live my life by a line issued from the mouth of Gandalf the Grey, on a film set, it doesn’t mean it’s worth less than something said by someone who actually existed. Because attribution is overshadowed by meaning, and the fact that these words stay with me means more than the circumstances under which they were uttered.
So if fiction is the foundation on which I build my life, I can promise you that my turrets will reach the sky, before yours reach my dungeons. Because fiction holds within it the promise of a better world; and I believe, not just because I can, but because I have to.
Jay Hulme is an award winning poet and performer from Leicester, Winner of Slambassadors 2015, and finalist in the 2016 Roundhouse Poetry Slam. He has recently branched out into children’s poetry, and his work was Highly Commended in the 2018 CLiPPA Awards. He also works as an ambassador for Inclusive Minds, promoting inclusion and diversity in children’s publishing, and doing sensitivity reads to ensure depictions of trans people in books are both accurate and unoffensive.
Over the years I have started looking at what I do as a
Librarian and Human more critically, one of the (library-related) things
currently taking up brain-space is Banned Books Week, and the question should
we be ‘celebrating’ it?
Should we have a week to recognize the dangers of censoring
books and ideas?
Yes
In an ideal world it would be more than a week, an on-going program of events and displays highlighting censorship and challenges to literature and the reasons behind them may have more of an impact.
Should Banned Books Week be cutesy and fun with photo opportunities, badges and social media opportunities to show how aware we all are? Your mileage may vary but recently I have been moving even more into the no camp on this. I have worn “I Read Banned Books” badges in the past, but my displays have mostly featured a history of banned books and books that were (and are) banned in specific countries as well as the reasons for banning.
My personal favourite display always featured Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence with prosecutor Mervyn Griffin-Jones’s question to the jury during the obscenity trial: Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?
Books are dangerous, they are carriers of ideas – the Nazis knew this when they organized book burnings. The Catholic Church for centuries had the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books) until it was abolished in 1967.
I grew up in South Africa where, in my lifetime, books were routinely, and often with the assistance of librarians, banned and burned – I only discovered this recently while researching the effects of Apartheid on Public Library provision.
Today we live in a world where state censorship and the banning of literature and people occurs globally. People in America, parts of the European Union and beyond still have good old fashioned book burnings.
The American Library Association compiles lists of books that are regularly challenged in schools and public libraries around the country.
The problem with Wales, he thought, was that it was too far away. But that was the point. To leave Southend behind. To get so far that no one would think to look for them there. Max wants to be just like his dad – fun, loud and strong. Instead, he always seems to be accidentally getting into fights and breaking things. But when his dad starts bringing home mysterious boxes, even more mysterious wads of cash starts turning up. Then Dad disappears. And it’s up to Max to look after his sisters until he comes home. When they run away to a remote village in Wales, he’s convinced that no one will find them. He’s Max Kowalski. Of course he can look after three kids with no grownups around! Although, he can’t stop thinking about where Dad really went. And the whispers of a golden dragon, asleep under the Welsh mountains…
Over on twitter last month, Louie Stowell wrote the review “If Jacqueline Wilson ganged up with Alan Garner and remixed A Monster Calls, with dragons. Powerful and deep.” and I was immediately sold. Brilliantly, Susie Day, the author of said book, then offered to send me one of her author copies and I bit off her hand! It was as brilliant as expected, with warmth and humour and fabulous characters in pretty dire but totally believable circumstances. After reading it, I asked Susie if she would answer some questions for the blog:
In your books you focus on “issues” that are relevant to lots of children but often missing from children’s fiction, always beautifully encased in a fabulous story. What prompted you to tackle toxic masculinity? ‘Issue books’ always sounds such a miserable label, doesn’t it? Like All Bran instead of Coco Pops. I hope my books are a blend of both (although less disgusting than that sounds). I’m always trying to write about children whose lives feel genuinely reflective of the world we live in – which means acknowledging the challenges of poverty, or grief, or homophobia. But it also means celebrating the ways we live through all that stuff: through daft jokes, and family, and love. We’ve made big cultural strides in celebrating girls who want to do traditionally ‘masculine’ things, from playing pirates and getting muddy to careers in STEM. But boys choosing stereotypically ‘girly’ things – being creative or sensitive, or being open to emotional expression and relying on friends for support – remains a bigger sticking point. When I worked at a boarding school for teenagers we had some mental health training, which showed me some really shocking stats. Suicide is the #1 cause of death among men aged 20-49 in the UK. We’re letting all kids down if we don’t try to identify why that’s happening, and work to change it.
You generally have female protagonists, how different was your approach when writing Max? This question really made me think! Max is a character who often won’t admit what he really feels or thinks, and wants to put up a front. But I’ve written lots of girls like that too – like Sammie in The Secrets of Sam and Sam, or Clover in Pea’s Book of Holidays. Max has ideas that he associates that very strongly with being a boy. But Sammie or Billie Bright: they bump up against the ‘required’ behaviours of being a girl a lot too. It’s the same problem, but with different expectations. The challenge Max has is that he thinks of himself in one way – big, tough, capable – and that doesn’t match his reality. The challenge for me as a writer is how to show that. But the characters I love to read about most are the ones who are figuring themselves out while we read them. I loved finding the visible symbols of that when he’s not a boy who would articulate it: the trainers he covets, buys, then throws away; the jumper his best friend’s mum lends him, that he keeps on wearing.
The scenes in the climbing centre were very convincing, did you have to do a lot of research or are you a climber? My girlfriend is laughing at this question. This book was written after we went on a walking holiday in Snowdonia together. She’s been walking there for years; I’m an experienced hiker but with a pretty emphatic fear of heights. She took me up a mountain called Glyder Fach, without mentioning it involved a scramble (sort of midway between a walk and a climb, where you need to use your hands but don’t need ropes). We got to the top – but I did cry on the way. That’s the mountain in the book, with a name change and a little geographical creativity. She helped me out with understanding climbing technique, and I watched the climbers on the rocks alongside the road up to Pen Y Pass, the start of the main Snowdon route. But I will never be a climber!
Castell Y Gwynt on Glyder Fach in Snowdonia by Balochdesign
Have you had much feedback from children about the story? What do they pick up on the most? Max as a character: that’s what kids seem to connect with. A friend of mine’s son was running round the park being ‘brave’, because that’s what Max is. I think the rising stakes help turn the pages too.
What kind of events do you enjoy doing most with children/in schools? I love school visits, whether it’s a KS2 assembly or classroom workshops. Like most authors, I’ve also done festivals to a roomful of babies, surprise 13-year-olds, and three people who are asleep, which certainly hones the improvisational skills… Assembly-style sessions are interactive, with live storytelling and games. I’m always – I mean this genuinely, I’ve never not had this experience – awed by the creativity that’s waiting to be uncapped. But I think it’s important that I’m not there as a teacher. An author visit can really support curriculum, and I often tailor sessions to particular objectives, like reading for pleasure or editing. But it should also inspire in ways that are bigger and broader: that can just celebrate why reading and writing matters, and why books are relevant for all of us. I don’t offer CPD for staff, but you might find my books, and my presence, useful for SRE.
What are you reading at the moment and who would you recommend it to? I’ve just inhaled Louie Stowell’s The Dragon in the Library (7-9), which is all joy: clever, inclusive, highly-illustrated and a smart way to persuade non-readers they might like books after all. Gabby Hutchinson Crouch’s Darkwood is a pure Pratchett-for-kids fairytale: great for advanced middle- grade readers who like talking spiders and laughing out loud. And I’m in the middle of A Pocketful of Stars by Aisha Bushby, which is gently breaking my heart, while also making me really happy to see fiction about gaming. More please.
What’s next for you? Something I can’t talk about yet, sorry! I’ve also written a short story for a new Doctor Who anthology called The Target Storybook, about the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) from the classic series. Every book I’ve written has a Doctor Who reference, so it was pretty sweet not having to find a place to fit that in for once. The book’s out in October, and I can’t wait to read the other stories.
Susie Day
Huge thanks to Susie for the copy of the book and the responses for the blog!
Martha and her friends have been drifting on a giant killer jellyfish since sea levels rose and the world ended. Life is gloopy, toxic and full of tentacles. It’s also really boring. More than anything, Martha wants to escape – but what ’s waiting for her on the shore? She doesn’t know it, but life is about to get much stickier …
When I read the blurb for this book I thought “this sounds so ridiculous that it just has to be good”, and it was a really entertaining read. I was most taken with how convincing the teens’ reactions to everything going on were, and what they dreamed of for the future. What I didn’t realise, until I was sent this piece of writing for the blog from Clare, was just how much it was influenced by the teenagers that she works with! What an amazing way to write a book!
Writing a book alongside your intended audience is brilliant fun. But it can also have surprising consequences. Jelly started out as a teaching resource, as a way of getting my students engaged with their creative writing lessons. I wrote alongside them, but also shaped sections around their needs- so I would often start lessons by giving students extracts from my book to correct. I filled the extracts with common errors for the students to find and as they identified them we discussed how the errors could be fixed and improved. Identifying and improving those mistakes in their own work would become the lesson focus for students. When the book was published my students had a question and answer session with me. When they asked these questions none of them had read the complete book- so their questions are based entirely on the extracts used during their lessons. My students’ questions:
[Asked by a student called James] Is there a character called James? If so, was it based on me? If not, why not? Yes there is! The character is not based on you, sadly. When I started writing the book I choose the name because I didn’t then teach anybody called James. Using the book in a school, it was particularly hard to find names which were appropriate for the characters in the book but which were not going to cause problems with my students. The main character, Martha, has the same name as my daughter. This is because when I was writing the book in the evenings she was very little and wanted me to sit outside her room until she fell asleep. Therefore the name, ‘Martha’, was particularly on my mind as I wrote. One of the teachers in the book, Dr Jones, is also named after one of our Biology teachers. While the character is very different from our teacher, Year 9 wanted the character to have the name of the teacher who had taught them in the lesson before mine.
What motivated you to try and get it published? Boredom. I did not go through the traditional publishing routes, but entered a competition [The Times/Chickenhouse competition] at the end of the Autumn term in 2017. I was sitting in a coffee shop with a cake as I finished writing the book. I didn’t really know what to do with the book, so I googled ‘competitions’, found this one, and decided I might as well enter. I didn’t bother sending the book off to any agents or publishers, so it has never actually been rejected. I am also now a firm believer in entering competitions!
Did you ever experience writers’ block, and if so, how did you overcome it? I don’t believe in writers’ block. I think it’s exactly the same feeling you get at the start of a big piece of homework. Nobody wants to write, and at the end of a long teaching day I definitely don’t want to sit down and do any work. But if you sit down and start, somehow it gets better and words do appear. Each evening I sat down and did some writing I always felt glad I had- however difficult it was to start.
Is there an event in your life which inspired you to write this? I was teaching our current Year 9s creative writing (back when they were in Year 7) and they were a bit stuck on the planning. So I decided to plan a book for them at the start of a lesson, but then I thought it looked quite interesting so I went off and wrote it. That week I had seen two interesting things:
A youtube clip in which a member of Donald Trump’s team said that sea levels rising wasn’t a problem, because it had already happened in the Bible and we’d been fine.
I was reading a Viking saga in which a kraken was described as being like an island which people could live on
Have you always been interested in mythical sea creatures? In no way. But I do have a phobia of shellfish, which I have received hypnotherapy for. When discussing this book, the publishers wanted to meet in a seafood restaurant because they thought it was hilarious and topical. It took me until after the main course before I told them that crab and lobster shells terrify me. Also, my editor wanted me to draw a picture of the kriks for her [my crustacean monsters]. Unfortunately I found them so disgusting that I was unable to do this. At some points while writing I needed to check what crabs and lobsters look like. Again, I was unable to look at pictures so had to get my son to look at them for me while I asked him questions.
What do the characters do when they get their periods? Yes, as in most fiction this is not mentioned (despite the fact that I know most women and teenage girls spend a significant part of their life thinking about it!). I did consider this. In the old days I understand that women often used to use rags. There are rags mentioned in the book, so I assumed that they would use these.
If it’s been climate change do the characters need suncream? Yes they do – although not all of the characters have white skin, so they don’t all need loads. I haven’t included this information in the book, but I had planned for the jellyfish slime to have suncream-like properties. It would also work as a moisturiser. I imagined the characters would smear it on their skin to protect themselves from the sun.
You changed the kriks [crustacean monsters]. Why? When I wrote them in school they were more humanoid. My editors pointed out to me that when the central characters get into battle with them, this means it’s like they’re killing humans. I hadn’t wanted to write a book about murder, so I thought I’d change the monsters!
Why did you let Dr Jones live? [Originally Dr Jones, the Biology teacher, was killed in the book because my students wanted the character to die] Actually I needed the character. She was so crucial to the story that when I killed her off I had to invent another, very similar character who lived until the end. My editor pointed out it would be easier if Dr Jones just lived. Plus, I have to share a staffroom with the real Biology teacher and didn’t want her to be cross with me.
Do you think your book could happen in reality? I hope not! Giant crustaceans would be a very, very bad thing. However, sea levels are rising and we’re not planning for climate change in the way that I think we should be. I think that is going to result in people dying, and I think it is going to change the world. We are also going to have to change the way we treat the world, as our place in it is going to be affected.
Clare Rees
Huge thanks to Chicken House books for sending me a copy, Nina for organising the guest post, and Clare for writing it!
