‘A near perfect
piece of fiction…worthy of comparison
with
JD Salinger’sThe
Catcher in the Rye’
Time Out
Winner of the 2003
Whitbread Children’s
Book Award
Smarties Gold Award
Teaching
points
Wide scope for language
and narrative analysis – dialogue, dialect,
the power of language; first person narrator,
the journal.
Extensive opportunities
for work on characters, themes and landscape.
Excellent cross-curricular
potential – history of 1960s, KS3 Science
link with the pain experiment.
Introduction to the Teacher’s
Resource written by
David Almond.
Synopsis
It’s 1962 and Bobby Burns is bracing himself for
the beginning of term. Not only is he starting at the
cheerless grammar school but also his dad is mysteriously
ill and the Cuban Missile Crisis threatens to trigger
off nuclear war – things are changing in his sleepy
Keely Bay. But then he’s got his friends to help
him, all fearless in their own ways: his old friends,
tough guy Joseph Connor and the wonder-working Ailsa
Spink; and his new ones, Bohemian Daniel Gower and the
fire-eating street performer McNulty. With thoughts
of power, pain, death, war and friendship swimming around
in his head, Bobby must come to terms with both injustice
and hope at home, school and in the world outside of
Keely Bay.
Cross-curricular links and
themes
History –
Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1960s, Kennedy’s
presidency.
Citizenship
and PSHE –
what can we do to prevent war? the morality of war.
Science –
the pain experiment, dissection and anatomy.
Themes –
fire; pain and punishment; the body and the soul;
life and death, healing and illness; landscape and
identity; war and peace; religion.
