My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece

Author: Annabel Pitcher
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0316201855
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 137

Book Description
My sister Rose lives on the mantelpiece. Well, some of her does. A collarbone, two ribs, a bit of skull, and a little toe. !--StartFragment-- To ten-year-old Jamie, his family has fallen apart because of the loss of someone he barely remembers: his sister Rose, who died five years ago in a terrorist bombing. To his father, life is impossible to make sense of when he lives in a world that could so cruelly take away a ten-year-old girl. To Rose's surviving fifteen year old twin, Jas, everyday she lives in Rose's ever present shadow, forever feeling the loss like a limb, but unable to be seen for herself alone. Told with warmth and humor, this powerful novel is a sophisticated take on one family's struggle to make sense of the loss that's torn them apart... and their discovery of what it means to stay together. !--EndFragment--

Ketchup Clouds

Author: Annabel Pitcher
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0316246778
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 169

Book Description
Dear Mr. S. Harris, Ignore the blob of red in the top left corner. It's jam, not blood, though I don't think I need to tell you the difference. It wasn't your wife's jam the police found on your shoe. . . . I know what it's like. Mine wasn't a woman. Mine was a boy. And I killed him exactly three months ago. Zoe has an unconventional pen pal--Mr. Stuart Harris, a Texas Death Row inmate and convicted murderer. But then again, Zoe has an unconventional story to tell. A story about how she fell for two boys, betrayed one of them, and killed the other. Hidden away in her backyard shed in the middle of the night with a jam sandwich in one hand and a pen in the other, Zoe gives a voice to her heart and her fears after months of silence. Mr. Harris may never respond to Zoe's letters, but at least somebody will know her story--somebody who knows what it's like to kill a person you love. Only through her unusual confession can Zoe hope to atone for her mistakes that have torn lives apart, and work to put her own life back together again. Rising literary star Annabel Pitcher pens a captivating second novel, rich with her distinctive balance between humor and heart. Annabel explores the themes of first love, guilt, and grief, introducing a character with a witty voice and true emotional resonance.

Silence Is Goldfish

Author: Annabel Pitcher
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0316370746
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description
My name is Tess Turner--at least, that's what I've always been told. I have a voice but it isn't mine. It used to say things so I'd fit in, to please my parents, to please my teachers. It used to tell the universe I was something I wasn't. It lied. It never occurred to me that everyone else was lying too. Fifteen-year-old Tess doesn't mean to become mute. At first, she's just too shocked to speak. And who wouldn't be? Discovering your whole life has been a lie because your dad isn't your real father is a pretty big deal. Terrified of the truth, Tess retreats into silence. Reeling from her family's betrayal, Tess sets out to discover the identity of her real father. He could be anyone--even the familiar-looking teacher at her school. Tess continues to investigate, uncovering a secret that could ruin multiple lives. It all may be too much for Tess to handle, but how can she ask for help when she's forgotten how to use her voice? In a brilliant study of identity, betrayal, and complex family dynamics, award-winning author Annabel Pitcher explores the importance of communication, even when we're faced with unspeakable truths.

Super-readable YA – The Last Days of Archie Maxwell

Author: Annabel Pitcher
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 1781128928
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 77

Book Description
Full of love, humour and heartbreak, this beautifully crafted YA novella from the multi-award-winning author of Ketchup Clouds and My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece is a compassionate and distinctive tale of modern family life and its issues.

Confessions of a Closet Catholic

Author: Sarah Darer Littman
Publisher: Puffin Books
ISBN: 9780142405970
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Book Description
Winner of the Sydney Taylor Book Award! An "eleven-going-on-twelve-year-old Jewish girl" searches for her identity in what Publisher's Weekly called a "reassuring debut novel about finding one's personal peace-and-comfort zone." Justine Silver's best friend, Mary Catherine McAllister, has given up chocolate for Lent, but Justine doesn't think God wants her to make that kind of sacrifice. So she's decided to give up being Jewish instead. Eleven-year-old Justine pours her heart out to her teddy bear, "Father Ted," in a homemade closet confessional. But when Justine's beloved Bubbe suffers a stroke, Justine worries that her religious exploration is responsible. Worse, she must suddenly contemplate life without Bubbe. Ultimately, it's Bubbe's quiet understanding of Justine's search for identity that helps Justine to find faith in the most important place of all-within herself.

Life and Loss

Author: Linda Goldman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100042376X
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Book Description
For decades, Life and Loss has been the book clinicians have relied on for a full and nuanced presentation of the many issues with which grieving children grapple, as well as an honest exploration of the interrelationship between unresolved grief, educational success, and responsible citizenry. This classic edition, which includes a new preface from the author, brings this exploration firmly into the twenty-first century and makes a convincing case that children’s grief is no longer restricted only to loss-identified children. Children’s grief is now endemic; it is global. Life and Loss is not just the book mental health professionals need to understand grief in the twenty-first century—it’s the book they need to work with grief in a practical and constructive way.

Rulers of Literary Playgrounds

Author: Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100020605X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Book Description
Rulers of Literary Playgrounds: Politics of Intergenerational Play in Children’s Literature offers multifaceted reflection on interdependences between children and adults as they engage in play in literary texts and in real life. This volume brings together international children’s literature scholars who each look at children’s texts as key vehicles of intergenerational play reflecting ideologies of childhood and as objects with which children and adults interact physically, emotionally, and cognitively. Each chapter applies a distinct theoretical approach to selected children’s texts, including individual and social play, constructive play, or play deprivation. This collection of essays constitutes a timely voice in the current discussion about the importance of children’s play and adults’ contribution to it vis-à-vis the increasing limitations of opportunities for children’s playful time in contemporary societies.

The Discourse of Reading Groups

Author: David Peplow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317914082
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Book Description
Of interest in their own terms as a significant cultural practice, reading groups also provide a window on the everyday interpretation of literary texts. While reading is often considered a solitary process, reading groups constitute a form of social reading, where interpretations are produced and displayed in discourse. The Discourse of Reading Groups is a study of such joint conceptual activity, and how this is necessarily embedded in interpersonal activity and the production of reader identities. Uniquely in this context it draws on, and seeks to integrate, ideas from both cognitive and social linguistics. The book will be of interest to scholars in literacy studies as well as cultural and literary studies, the history of reading, applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, digital technologies and educational research.

Terror and Counter-Terror in Contemporary British Children’s Literature

Author: Blanka Grzegorczyk
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351385372
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 189

Book Description
The widespread threat of terrorist and counter-terrorist violence in the twenty-first century has created a globalized context for social interactions, transforming the ways in which young people relate to the world around them and to one another. This is the first study that reads post-9/11 and 7/7 British writing for the young as a response to this contemporary predicament, exploring how children’s writers find the means to express the local conditions and different facets of the global wars around terror. The texts examined in this book reveal a preoccupation with overcoming various forms of violence and prejudice faced by certain groups within post-terror Britain, as well as a concern with mapping out their social relations with other groups, and those concerns are set against the recurring themes of racist paranoia, anti-immigrant hostility, politicized identities, and growing up in countries transformed by the effects of terror and counter-terror. The book concentrates on the relationship between postcolonial and critical race studies, Britain’s colonial legacy, and literary representations of terrorism, tracing thematic and formal similarities in the novels of both established and emerging children’s writers such as Elizabeth Laird, Sumia Sukkar, Alan Gibbons, Muhammad Khan, Bali Rai, Nikesh Shukla, Malorie Blackman, Claire McFall, Miriam Halahmy, and Sita Brahmachari. In doing so, this study maps new connections for scholars, students, and readers of contemporary children’s fiction who are interested in how such writing addresses some of the most pressing issues affecting us today, including survival after terror, migration, and community building.

Yours Truly

Author: Annabel Pitcher
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 031633541X
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
Previously published under the title Ketchup Clouds Dear Mr. S. Harris, Ignore the blob of red in the top left corner. It's jam, not blood, though I don't think I need to tell you the difference. It wasn't your wife's jam the police found on your shoe. I know what it's like. Mine wasn't a woman. Mine was a boy. And I killed him three months ago exactly. Zoe has an unconventional pen pal -- Mr. Stuart Harris, a Texas Death Row inmate and convicted murderer. But that's okay, because Zoe has an unconventional story to tell. A story about how she fell for two boys, betrayed one of them, and killed the other. Hidden away in her backyard shed in the middle of the night with a jam sandwich in one hand and a pen in the other, Zoe gives voice to her heart and her fears after months of silence. Mr. Harris may never respond to Zoe's letters, but at least somebody will know her story -- somebody who knows what it's like to kill the person you love. Only through her unusual confession can Zoe hope to atone for her mistakes that have torn lives apart, and work to put her own life back together again. Rising literary star Annabel Pitcher pens a captivating second novel, rich with her distinctive balance between humor and heart. Annabel explores the themes of first love, guilt, and grief, introducing a character with a witty voice and true emotional resonance.