Synopsis
Joe Maloney isn’t your average truant. It’s
not the bullies’ taunts that keep him away from
school – he gets enough of that just walking out
of his front door; and it’s certainly not in rebellion
against his mum – he could never do that. He just
can’t imagine being caged inside the school gates,
away from the fantastic creatures that only he sees
all around, and so his days are spent wandering the
wilderness around Helmouth with his mate, Stanny Mole.
But Stanny has got in with Joff, a menacing figure who
is obsessed with a violent kind of survival, with hunting
and mastering nature. Escape for Joe comes in the form
of the rundown Hackenschmidt’s Circus and the
strangely familiar Corinna. It is in the circus, a place
of contained wildness where the barriers between the
human and animal world are fluid, that Joe learns the
meaning of his night-time visits from the tiger –
so real that his skin and its pelt begin to feel as
one…
Cross-curricular links and themes
- Citizenship
and PSHE –
bullying and truancy; ethics of circuses/zoos.
- RE –
spiritualism and the animal kingdom; ideas of reincarnation.
- Drama –
circus performances, the role of costume.
- Themes –
bullying and truancy; links between the human, animal
and natural worlds; wild and tame nature.
| ISBN
0 340 88351 0 £6.99
January 2005 192pp |
|
