Thes Motherless Land by Nikki May

 

I’ve read some great book this month and was quite torn between two:  Abi Daré’s And So I Roar and Nikki May’s This Motherless Land.  And So I Roar is the sequel to Daré’s award-winning story The Girls with the Louding Voice. May’s text just had the edge in readability and story-telling.

Tragic circumstances bring two cousins together. They become the best of friends and then the worst of enemies.   

May’s characters are so well drawn and we get wonderful feelings of times and place as the narrative shifts between modern Nigeria and a faded genteel English countryside.

There are the twists and turns, coincidences and questions about identify we welcome in popular fiction and the fine writing we love in literary fiction.

I saw both Daré and May at a Manchester Literature Festival event. It was such an interesting evening and I returned home with two hefty hardbacks.  Well worth the effort however.      

Find your copy here  

Note, this is an affiliate link and a small portion of what you pay, at no extra cost to you,  may go to Bridge House Publishing.  

Mission Find Mum by Jo Somerset

I’ve only read a few books this month and one of those was Alan Bennett’s Untold Stories. I quite enjoyed that but it didn’t wow me and it did take me over half the month to read.

I’ve decided on Mission Find Mum, a middle grade story of abandonment and reconciliation.   Isla and Lac’s mum goes missing. I’ve picked this partly because I am so chuffed that one of my former students from the University of Salford has published a children’s book. 

‘Aunty Lou’ – not really their aunty but a friend of their mother who looks after them from time to time – cannot help his time as she has to go to hospital for an operation.  Mum had not realised this.

Isla, who is partially deaf, and wears an aid, is bullied at school and now has to act as parent to Lac, short for Lachlan, her younger brother.  A look at her mum’s browsing history indicates to Isla that Mum has gone to the Hebrides.

So, she Lac, her hamster Weasley and Lac’s Luke Skywalker toy set off. They manage but don’t shine at camping and fending for themselves. Jo Somerset really has got rid of the adults and left the children to have the adventure on their own.  Unlike in the Enid Blyton books this isn’t fun and it isn’t even too comfortable.

The police and social workers are now looking for them.  

There are some charming coincidences, just like in all the good works by Dickens, Molière and Shakespeare. The children inadvertently end up at their Granny’s home. The co-pilot in the helicopter that is looking for them is their father. Granny recognises the ring Isla has brought with her.

It’s all a slightly uncomfortable read.  Was Mum negligent to go off and leave them like that? Why had Dad abandoned them?

It comes right in the end but still leaves questions.    

The book is 209 pages long.  It uses a blocked text and an adult serif with difficult   ‘a’s and ‘g’s.   Each chapter heading has a black and white picture of something to do with the chapter.

In the acknowledgments Somerset refers to her work with Greenback Primary school.

There is also a note for children about where they might get help if they are facing problems like Isla’s. 

 

Find your copy here 

Note, this is an affiliate link and a small portion of what you pay, at no extra cost to you, may go to Bridge House Publishing.