Guest Book Review: Maggot Moon by Sally Gardener

Each year I have the pleasure of working with a group of readers to collectively select the books that will feature in a reading programme, Summer Reads. Between August 2013 and January 2014, the Readers' Circle will work through a longlist of more than 150 books to find the 6 titles that we fall in love with and want to recommend to other readers. And throughout that period I'll be posting some of the reviews here on Books, Time and Silence. 
*Thanks to the publisher for providing review copies of this book.

Guest Review by Pearl Crossfield

Maggot Moon is a young adult novel that has the potential to appeal to a wide range of ages. Sally Gardner dedicates her book to 'the dreamers / Overlooked at school /  Never won prizes - you who will own tomorrow'  and this pretty well sums up both the protagonist of the story and the plot line.  Standish Treadwell is a teenager who appears to suffer from dyslexia, who  'can’t read / can’t write' and is bullied at school.  For him the words on the blackboard are 'just circus horses dancing up and down', they mean nothing and he prefers his daydreaming life because it’s better than being 'worried sick' all the time. Yet  Standish is clever, has imagination and courage and eventually achieves a great victory, albeit a bitter-sweet one.

The drawings scattered throughout the pages feature the life cycle of the fly and the death of a rat.  The drawings are cartoon-like and offer a skillful way of holding a distracted children’s attention. The images tell a story of death and regeneration, a life cycle explored through decaying matter and the food chain. Sally Gardner and illustrator Julian Crouch cleverly draw a parallel with an infestation of maggots both in the natural world and in the society the characters are living in, and alludes to the title and the somber themes of the book.

Any reader no matter what age could appreciate this book on several different levels.  It is imaginative, with a clever use of language, Standish may not be able to read and write but he has a broad vocabulary, saying 'I collect words - they are sweets in the mouth of sound'.  He can use words in a humorous way too, when describing a teacher he says, 'Never would I have thought that the hard boiled Miss Philips had such a soft, sweet centre'.  Despite the short, tight chapters (some only a paragraph), and the humour, it is not a light read at all.  It is a fable, but a rather bleak and grim one. We never quite get a sense of the setting and I found myself wondering whether the characters were perhaps living in an alternative history, a kind of post World War Two totalitarian regime. There could also be historical parallels drawn here with the deception of the moon landing, since there have been conspiracy theories about moon landings, hoaxes supposedly staged by NASA. I’m sure that each reader will create their own idea of this world but you probably need to be older to appreciate the historical realism, and to see what Standish, as first person narrator, does not see at first, the gap between the appearance and the reality.  The characterization is good, particularly Standish, and despite his oddness and the weirdness surrounding him he becomes a rounded, real person, a “crazy brave muddle” who we want to find freedom for himself and his friends and family.

This is an unusual book, a quick read but a thought provoking one.

Maggot Moon was published by Hot Key Books in 2013. Edition shown is paperback edition, ISBN 9781471400445, 279pp

Pearl Crossfield has recently retired after a career working for an Insurance Company and Local Government.  She can’t remember a time when she did not enjoy reading and recently studied Literature part-time with the Open University.  After all, there's little better than being able to discuss books with other like-minded people!

Book Review: More Than This by Patrick Ness

*Spoiler Alert: it is difficult for me to review this book without discussing a plot twist. As such, it may be better left until you've already read the book.

Occasionally, upon sitting down to write a review, I find myself trying to picture George Orwell in his 'cold and stuffy' bedsit writing reviews. And as I do so, I try to ask the question: 'What would Orwell think?'

I admire George Orwell for his capacity to strip away all veneer of style and get straight to the meaning of a book. He's a total utilitarian; if a book doesn't do something, or if it doesn't reflect a political view he is comfortable with, it is slaughtered. The clarity of his critical eye amazes me, even where I disagree with the execution of it. And by thinking of him, I try to engender greater critical assurance in my reviews.

Were Orwell alive today and asked to review More Than This, I fear his vicious pen would be scathing. For Ness comes perilously close to presenting without outrage a fictional world in which global collapse has resulted in humanity willingly swapping personal liberty for something safe and comatose. There is even a character known as the Driver whose job it appears to be to ruthlessly maintain the status quo against any challenge. To Orwell, writing in the 1930s and 40s, More Than This would have seemed startlingly reactionary.

And yet, in making this comparison I find myself realising how different modern society is to that which Orwell would have recognised. Reviewers of today will be likely to frame discussion about this book as another statement of Patrick Ness's implacable refusal to cow-tie to the supposed conventions of what young adult fiction can and can't be about. Ness is every bit as radical as Orwell, though as thinkers they are possibly as opposite as it is possible to be. If there is a central concern in Ness's literature it is that human beings are sympathetic, even when at their most horrible, and that an understanding of the world lies in understanding people, warts and all. Where Orwell lives in the black and the white, Ness is in all the shades of grey between. I admire Orwell for his certainty about the world, but I love Patrick Ness for his uncertainty.

More Than This begins with a teenage boy, Seth, dying in icy cold water, his drowning body smashed against the rocks. Yet he wakes up naked and exhausted in a dusty, abandoned world that appears to be the suburban English street he grew up on. Is this an afterllife? Is he in hell, forced to spend eternity on his own, with vivid agonizing memories of his life assaulting him whenever he shuts his eyes? Memories of the tragedy that drove his family across the Atlantic to America, memories of friendship, love, and betrayal, and all that led up to his death. As Seth explores his new world and tries to understand what is going on, we can't help wondering: what is going on?

More Than This is at its best when it is least dramatic. The plot begins being about life after death and turns into a science fiction distopia in which humanity has abandoned a dying planet to live in a networked virtual reality and yet doesn't ever quite get anywhere. But around this, we have a story about feeling trapped as a teenager and certain that there must be more than this to life yet not knowing where or how it will happen. There is a wonderfully touching, supportive loving relationship between Seth and his best friend Goodmund, that will see it challenged by homophobic people the world over, but which shows everything that young love should be. Ness is a writer with absolutely no time for thoughts about what young adults should and shouldn't be exposed to. If it exists, it is fair game is his approach, and I congratulate him for it.

More Than This doesn't grab me as intensely as his other books have. The distopia feels underdeveloped, the afterlife underwhelming. But the flashbacks are brilliant. I may like to try and imagine what George Orwell would think about a book, but I don't need to agree with him. Patrick Ness is a phenomenal writer. More Than This isn't a phenomenal book, but well worth reading nonetheless.

More Than This was published by Walker Books in September 2013. ISBN: 9781406331158

Book Review: Everything Beautiful - Simmone Howell

Read: February 2010
 
Everything Beautiful in one Tweet-sixzed chunk:

Slightly illicit and thoroughly escapist, Everything Beautiful is a journey is self discovery for teens everywhere.

I believe in Chloe and chocolate.
I believe the best part is always before.
I believe that most girls are shifty and most guys are dumb.
I believe the more you spill, the less you are.
I don’t believe in life after death or diuretics or happy endings.
I don’t believe anything good will come of this.

Belief and scepticism of all sorts are at play in Simmone Howell’s warm and edgy coming-of-age novel Everything Beautiful. At times outrageous, always funny, and emotionally involving, it is a great young adult read, perfect (I assume having never been one) for teen girls everywhere. There is plenty of outlandish, risqué behaviour – including foul language, sex, drugs, and all sorts of rebellion – yet this is encapsulated within a plot that is trustworthy and empowering, that promotes self-worth and respect for others above all else. Reading Everything Beautiful is a little chance to walk on the wild side without ever having to leave the safety of your own bed.

Riley Rose is sixteen-years-old and determined to be the bad girl. She’s still mourning the death of her mother two years earlier and it doesn’t help that her father has got himself a new girlfriend, a born again Christian named Norma who seems intent on being Riley’s best friend. It’s all left Riley rudderless and out of control, experimenting with sex and drugs and alcohol in an effort to find the love and comfort that’s missing from the rest of her life. Now Norma has tricked her father into sending Riley to Spirit Ranch, a Christian holiday camp in the middle of nowhere in the hope that the team-building exercises and wholesome company will cure her wayward ways.

But Riley has other ideas. She’d much rather be back home, preparing for Ben Sebatini’s big party with her best friend Chloe. If she has to go to Christian camp, she’s going to “go as a plague.”

Within hours of arriving, she’s ensured that all the other campers know who she is, and that most hate her. She is a big boisterous girl, sassy and quick to air her opinions. She’s rude, rebellious, and obnoxious, particularly when it comes to religion. Yet she’s also fragile and easy to identify with. And as she gets to know her fellow campers, she discovers that they are all as lost as she is. There’s the lovely over-protected Sarita, conceited beauty and love-rival Fleur, siblings Bird and Olivia who, like Riley, don’t quite fit in. And then there’s the newly paraplegic Dylan Luck, in who she finds an equally angry co-conspirator and, ultimately, an unexpected friend. Together, they turn the camp upside down and no-one emerges quite the same.

Everything Beautiful is a book about self-discovery and self-expression. Riley is a wonderful, unusual, heroine. She’s entertaining when she’s angry, prone to insensitive outbursts which one cannot help but smile along with. She’s capable and resourceful, a generous and thoughtful friend when she wants to be and a bit of a bitch when she doesn’t. She’s unashamed of her weight, a plus size role-model who doesn’t feel sorry for herself and we don’t need to pity. Above all she’s thoroughly human. Even when she plays sport, and struggles with her bouncing flesh, we do not take it as an author prosthelytizing about the need to be a healthy weight. It’s presented as just another part of Riley’s experience of life. Indeed, one of the most appealing aspects of Everything Beautiful is that it doesn’t lecture or present an agenda in anything. The sex isn’t there to be cautionary, the scrapes Riley gets herself in are nothing more than the scrapes of a teenage character trying to find herself and her place in the world.

Similarly, although structured around the Biblical tale of creation – On the first day… etc – religion is a fairly insignificant backdrop. Riley’s emotional journey is one of spiritual discovery, but this is in its widest sense, in finding balance between rebellion and conformity, self-affirmation and self-destruction, what you believe, and what you don’t. Indeed, Riley intersperses her rebellion with reading Thomas More’s Utopia, and it is in this that she finds new acceptance of the mixed-up world she finds herself in.

Everything Beautiful is not the genre of novel I usually read but I thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless. It’s good, slightly illicit and thoroughly escapist fiction. It’s impossible not to come away from Everything Beautiful wishing you could spend a week experiencing life in all its many forms in such an immediate and desperate way as Riley and the others do at Spirit Ranch, or feeling that the world makes a little more sense. And this transformation, this coming-of-age, is reflected in a new manifesto, one which is a lot less strident than it’s predecessor.

I believe in Chloe and friendship and love now.
I will always think of Dylan when I hear the Boobook owl.
I believe most girls are insecure and most guys are bluffing.
I believe the more you spill, the messier you get.
I don’t believe in miracles but I do believe in spirits.
I believe there are more questions than answers.
I believe the best part is still to come.
(I still believe in chocolate!)

Bloomsbury, January 2009, 9780747597858, pp278

7 out of 10

Book Review: Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness

Read: April 2010

Monsters of Men in one tweet-sized chunk:

Monsters of Men is a near perfect conclusion to a near perfect trilogy.

“War,” says Mayor Prentiss, his eyes glinting. “At last.”

So begins Monsters of Men, the final volume in Patrick Ness’s multi-award-winning Chaos Walking trilogy. Lines have been drawn, armies are marching; divisive and polarising leaders have got what they wanted. And Todd and Viola are caught in the middle of it, faced with ominous odds and unenviable choices. The first of these is to split up, with Todd staying behind to keep an eye on the Mayor and fight the invading Spackle army while Viola goes in search of the scout ship that has just landed. Once again, their trust in each other will be tested to its absolute limit.

Given that its title stems from the warning delivered by various characters throughout the series – “war makes monsters of men” – it is no surprise that war is the predominant theme and, for better or worse, shapes everything that takes place. Yet Monsters of Men is as complex and multifarious as war itself, an investigation into the many ways and many ends for which people are drawn into it. It is an enthralling culmination to the finest series I’ve read in many years. Chaos Walking combines first rate characterisation with heart-stoppingly exciting plots and engaging, direct, and often lyrical prose. I run out of superlatives when describing just how good it is.

Best of all it challenges the reader. You cannot sit back and watch passively as events unfold. At every turn you are placed in the characters’ shoes, confronted with the question: what would you do? What would you do if your greatest enemy were the only person who could save you from a marauding army bent on revenge? What would you do if your “one in particular” were about to die and the only way you could save them were to fire a missile that would kill hundreds, if not thousands, of enemy soldiers and destroy all hopes of a desperately wished for peace. Faced with the choice between vengeance and forgiveness what would you do? What space is there for idealism when your very survival is driven by a need for realpolitik?

Every choice is played through to its conclusion, laying clear the full ramifications of that choice, the characters forced to live with and adapt to the world they have shaped.  Reading is a dynamic experience; different fonts for the different narrators bring the text alive, Noise sometimes squeezing, sometimes ramming its way onto the page. Characters feel alive because their choices are your own and because they are each three- dimensional, capable of a whole gamut of actions and reactions, none of which are black or white. Ness seems to instinctively appreciate that it is in contradiction and hypocrisy that life is lived and experienced. Uncomfortable truths demonstrating just how difficult some choices are:

“Come!” he says to me. “See what it’s like to be on the winning side.”
And he rides off after the new soldiers.
I ride after him, gun up, but not shooting, just watching and feeling-
Feeling the thrill of it
Cuz that’s it-
That’s the nasty, nasty secret of war-
When yer winning-
When yer winning, it’s ruddy thrilling-

Or how about this, a realisation that love might be the most destructive possibility of all:

“I’d have done the same, Viola,” Todd says, one more time.
And I know he’s saying nothing but the truth.
But as he hugs me again before I leave, I can’t help but think it over and over.
If this is what Todd and I would do for each other, does that make us right?
Or does it make us dangerous?

Monsters of Men combines gripping storylines with real moral quandaries. In Todd and Viola it has heroes you root for with every ounce of your being. They are far from perfect and it is their self-abasement, their doubt, which makes them so likable. And the point that Todd and many other characters come back to time and again is that it’s not how you fall, but how you get back up again that counts.

Contrarily it is the absolute certainty of Mayor Prentiss and Mistress Coyle that makes them so hideous. Their bloodthirsty eagerness for war only adds to this, as does their calm and rational defence of its transformative nature, the Nietzschean survival of the fittest test by which you walk into the fire and either emerge bigger and stronger, or fall away. War doesn’t make monsters of men, Mayor Prentiss and Mistress Coyle chillingly echo each other early on. “It’s war that makes us men in the first place.”

Yet whereas The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and The Answer had, at their heart, a message that power is the ultimate end, Monsters of Men begins to reveal the inherent flaws in that argument. Madness is often defined as continuing to do the same thing time and time again yet expecting different results, and the longer the book goes on, the more those who seek to divide and rule appear ridiculous. Stuck using the same tactics as before, without recognising the new opportunities that exist.

Underlying their military struggle is another battle – this one an ideological struggle between competing visions of how peace is won (discussion versus force, individuality versus collectivism) – and they are losing it.
What would life be like if you could hear everybody’s thoughts, and everybody could hear yours? What would be the effect on individuality, free thought, privacy? These are the questions Ness posed in The Knife of Never Letting Go. In The Ask and The Answer the question evolved into competing ideas of how to run such a society. In Monsters of Men, the circle is completed and the benefits of Noise presented. What if communication were organic rather than active, a natural inter-connectedness that provided community to all and bred trust and unity rather than secrets and lies? How much more intimate might relationships be if miscommunication were no longer possible?

“I think it could be the way forward for all of us,”…If we can all learn to speak this way, then there won’t be any more division… That’s the secret of this planet, Todd. Communication, real and open, so we can finally understand each other.

Warmth, love, and hope abound. As the book goes on these choices begin to congeal around a coherent moral stance, a single call to arms: be the change you want in the world. No matter how hard that might be.

“I’m sorry, Bradley,” I say. “I couldn’t have done any other thing.”
He looks up sharply. “Yes, you could have.” He pulls himself to his feet and says it again, more firmly. “Yes, you could have. Choices may be unbelievably hard but they’re never impossible.”
“What if it’d been Simone down there instead of Todd?” I say.
And Simone is all over his Noise, his deep feelings for her, feelings I don’t think are returned. “You’re right,” He says. “I don’t know. I hope I’d make the right choice, but Viola it is a choice. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that’s not how a person with integrity acts.”

With a host of new characters – including an angry third narrator bent on revenge – who provide fresh impetus and perspective, Monsters of Men is a fitting conclusion full of all the qualities and insight that made its predecessors so rewarding. As you’d expect from a final volume, loose ends are tied up, though not at the expense of the narrative flow, and plenty remains unanswered. Most notably of all, Ness integrates the vast and powerful themes into the plot so seamlessly that they appear effortless. This is a rare and remarkable achievement. Monsters of Men is a near perfect conclusion to a near perfect trilogy.

Walker Books, May 2010, 9781406310271, 624pp

9.5 out of 10

The Ask and The Answer - Patrick Ness

This review first appeared on Vulpes Libris.

Read: July 2009

The Ask and The Answer in one Tweet-sized chunk:
A penetrating and perceptive, edge-of-the-seat intrigue with a host of engaging characters.


“Not everything is black and white, Todd. In fact, almost nothing is.”

The Knife of Never Letting Go ended on a cliff-hanger. Having spent the entire book fleeing for their lives across New World, with a marauding army laying waste to towns and villages behind them, a psychopathic preacher trying to kill them, and with Viola wounded and near death, Todd stumbled into Haven only to find they were too late.

“We were in the square, in the square where I’d run, holding her, carrying her, telling her to stay alive. Stay alive till we got safe, till we got to Haven so I could save her-
But there weren’t no safety, no safety at all, there was just him and his men-”

For unbeknownst to them Mayor Prentiss has arrived first. The city has surrendered without a shot being fired. Now he is President, and Haven has been renamed New Prentisstown. The Haven they dreamed of throughout the first book is now just a bigger, harsher version of the town Todd left. It is a beginning befitting of a book in which an insidious air of fear and impending doom replaces the relentless hope the characterised The Knife of Never Letting Go.

New Prentisstown has its surprises, most notably a Noise suppressant which allows men and women to live in harmony together. But that is the first thing to go. By confiscating it, the Mayor sends the entire population into a frantic cold turkey come down which becomes another tool in his authoritarian control. In the gender apartheid that follows, the Mayor seeks to recreate society as he wishes it.

“The borders between men and women had become blurred, and the reintroduction of those borders is a slow and painful process. The formation of mutual trust takes time, but the important thing to remember is, as I’ve said, the war is over.”


Yet the interesting thing about this segregation is that it does not appear to be based on a belief in the weakness of women, but rather their strength. Mayor Prentiss’s hatred of women is not a sexualised or violent misogyny, but rather a cold and aloof one born, one suspects, of fear and hurt. But that is long in the past. Amongst the ensuing cacophony, his control of Noise sets him apart as a man to be feared, a man not to be trusted, a man able to keep secrets in a world where other men’s thoughts are as transparent as if they were speaking them aloud.

Another great departure from the first book comes as Todd and Viola are separated and the narrative splits between them. At first they don’t seem to do too badly. Each is kept alive in bearable conditions, Viola for what she knows, and Todd for something unspecific, some unrealised potential the Mayor sees in him. Viola is locked up in a House of Healing, a sort of hospital run exclusively by and for women, under the direction of Mistress Coyle, while Todd is partnered with Davey Prentiss and set to oversee the management of Spackle (the native alien species on the planet) prisoners who have been quarantined on the edge of town. There he is forced to do the Mayor’s bidding, ‘processing’ the Spackle, managing them, dampening their spirits. The Mayor’s Noise reverberates inside his head; he cannot escape the omnipresent cajoling.

The chapters alternate between Todd’s punchy voice and the crisper, more orthodox narration of Viola. Yet the effect of this is to spread the focus of the plot away from them. They are no longer in control of their destinies, the crux of the story moves to those who control them. In Viola’s case this is Mistress Coyle, for Todd it is Mayor Prentiss.

Each, but particularly Todd, is driven to rationalising the actions they are compelled to take. Todd tries to convince himself that it is better that he be the one doing these things, someone who cares for the Spackle wellbeing, rather than the Mayors infinitely crueller henchmen.

What else can he do?

Then the attacks start. At first they are just raids on shops but are soon followed by explosions. What at first appeared to be a peaceful passing of power turns out to have inspired the reformation of The Ask, a guerrilla band of women led by Mistress Coyle and originally formed during the Spackle Wars. Soon, and without much choice on their part, Todd and Viola find themselves on opposite sides of a war being fought between competing ideologies and systems of control. As they each seek to justify and explain their actions, their once unbreakable bond begins to waver, as rumour and separation give way to doubt and suspicion.

Who is right when both sides are wrong?

The Ask and The Answer is a book of questions. We are the choices we make, that is its message. How we respond to these questions defines who we are, and how we feel about the choices made defines our place in the world. There are no right or wrong choices, Ness seems to be saying, no black and white just a whole lot of grey uncertainty. It is a pretty bleak book. As Todd and Viola stumble between difficult choices with harsh consequences the reader becomes almost personally culpable, through association and loyalty, for the mess that follows.

It would all be so much easier if the Mayor were a one dimensional evil presence. But he is more complicated than that. He makes generous gestures, offers reasonable arguments and rational explanations. He can be warm and friendly when it is in his interests to be so. But he keeps his motives to himself, and it is these motives that seem to harbour all his malicious intentions. He says he has The Answer, but in trying to impose it just poses more questions. Similarly, Mistress Coyle is far from a heroic freedom fighter and The Ask, while posing many questions, seem to have relatively few worthwhile answers. When the veneer of political opposition is stripped away they can be seen as little more than a destructive force bent on retribution and settling old scores. In fact, it would be perfectly possible to argue that in their righteous single-minded crusade, the guerrillas incidentally become at least as accountable as the Mayor. If not more. If war is destructive, then aren’t those who actively pursue it not the most guilty of all?

And the problem with seeming omnipotence is that there is always someone who will come along and challenge it. Increasingly powerless, Todd grows ever more furious. And that fury is something not even the Mayor can control.

The Ask and The Answer is a superb sequel. Along with The Knife of Never Letting Go it was the best book I read in 2009. Although less breathlessly exciting than its predecessor, it is a more penetrating book, one whose ideas ruminate long after the adventure is concluded. It is perceptive, edge-of-the-seat enthralling, and populated with superbly powerful characters. Just as The Knife of Never Letting Go commentated on contemporary themes such as knife crime and gender stereotyping, The Ask and The Answer tackles debates around governmental control, legal opposition, and the War on Terror. It is a book with significance far broader than its own plot.

Yet it is noticeably the middle book in a trilogy. Sandwiched between the freshness of the first book and culmination I anticipate in the third, it can feel a little passive. Things are building, forces are amassing, situations are reaching boiling point. Yet this is all presented in tiny incremental shifts. There are neither great denouements, nor clear ends in sight. What is started here will find no resolution until Monsters of Men is published in May 2010.

Patrick Ness is an awesomely talented writer, controlling information to shape the responses of his readers and drawing them into emotional and intellectual engagement with the events taking place. I am utterly hooked. When it is released, there will be a fight in our house as to who gets to read Monsters of Men first. It was 240 days and counting when I reviewed The Knife of Never Letting Go; now it is 124. And still I’m counting.

Perhaps it is best to finish as The Ask and The Answer begins, with its Friedrich Nietzsche epigraph:

“Battle not with monsters
lest you become a monster
and if you gaze in the abyss
the abyss gazes into you.”

** Earlier this week The Ask and The Answer was named as the winner of the Children’s Book Award at the 2009 Costa Book Awards. The judges described it as “a major achievement in the making.” The  overall Costa Book of the Year will be chosen between the five catagory winners and announced on Tuesday 26th January.

9.5 out of 10

Skellig - David Almond

Read: April 2009

Skellig in one Tweet-sized chunk:
Skellig is pretty much the perfect novel.

Michael has just moved to a new house. His baby sister is clinging to life in hospital having been born prematurely. His parents are exhausted with worry. He just wants things to go back to normal. Then one day he wanders into the crumbling old garage and finds an old man lying amongst the spiders' webs behind an old tea chest. At first he seems dead, but he is not. Michael brings him food – 27 and 53 from the local Chinese takeaway and a bottle of brown ale, “food of the Gods” as the man describes them – and starts to visit him regularly. And together with his new neighbour Mina, they hatch a plan to carry him out into the light and help him live once again.

There is not much more to say about Skellig really, other than that it is virtually the perfect book. David Almond's prose is lyrically delightful, easy to read, and laden with exquisite tenderness and real warmth. It is a beautifully story, universally appealing, and with an inspiring plot which will not only bring a smile to your face but put a little tear to your eye as well. Partly fable for the childhood we all dream of having and partly lesson on the beauty of life, it is a book which everyone should read.

8.5 out of 10