Reading Age 10 – 14 years
This book had my attention from beginning to end. How does a small boy cope with a drunken, racist father, an absent mother, a teenage sister, moving to a country town and a new school and the constant presence of an urn on the mantelpiece?
Narrated by ten-year-old Jamie this story tears at your heart strings yet makes you laugh at the same time. Though his understanding is limited, Jamie gets things right about what is important, while his parents have shut their living children from their grief-overwhelmed lives.
At school he can’t write truthfully about his holidays or family, the parent /teacher interview is a disaster, to his class mates and teacher he is quite weird. His fifteen- year-old sister, who deals with the loss in her own ways, understands. Jas is there for Jamie while their father can’t let the other sister go. Their mother has gone off with the Support Worker sent to help the family cope with grief. If you think this sounds too sad to read, read it. You will want to protect Jamie and Jas who are totally neglected by those who should be protecting them, yet be delighted by the honesty and humour, the irony and the bitter-sweetness of help coming from the girl who bears classmates’ jibes of curry germ because of her origins.
Reviewed by Gayle Davidson
Odell Learning Resources Centre
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