Morris Gleitzman: Everybody deserves to have something good in their life

After moving house (twice) and going away on holiday (sadly just the once), I can finally get back to the blog, which seems to have become covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs.

However, all that time away from blogging has given me one thing: time to read, which means I've been able to reach for books that will cheer me up, make me smile, lift my sunken spirit. Instead, I've been reading Morris Gleitzman. And a lot of it.

Morris Gleitzman is like my Star Wars. Instead of "You've never seen Star Wars?" I get "You've never read a Morris Gleitzman?" (Actually, I get both - I've also never seen Star Wars. Hey. Stop judging. It looks like someone strung some tin cans together, gave a guy a voice distorter and hey presto: R2-D2.)

So a few weeks ago, I bought my first Gleitzman. I then bought my second, third, fourth and fifth. (I am now the person walking around saying "You've never read a Morris Gleitzman?" to total strangers.) The three I started with were Once, Then and Now. I could say that they're all about a boy called Felix and his experiences during WWII, but that sounds dull and dusty, and it's not really what they're about at all. 

What Gleitzman, like the very best writers, does, is make the reader part of the story. Considering that these books are all written in first person from the perspectives of young children, that's quite something. The thing that is so brilliant here is that it isn't the acts of WWII that are shocking - I am, quite disturbingly, used to reading about, or watching, Nazis taking control and other people suffering. What is so brilliant in these books and what makes them different, though, is the window through which you experience this. Gleitzman sticks so fervently to his main character Felix's innocent and trusting point of view, that you can't help but live the story with him.

In Once, for example, when a group of men in armbands arrive at the orphange Felix has been hidden in and start burning books, Felix says, "I get it. Mother Minka was complaining to us library monitors only last week that the library was very messy and needed a tidy-up. She must have got sick of waiting for us to do it and called in professional librarians in professional librarian armbands."

For Felix, everything is a story. It takes him some time to come to grips with what is going on around him. He doesn't understand who the Nazis are or what they are doing or why, but he tries to justify and explain everything he sees. Why are those people naked? They must be hot. Why are those people dead? They must have annoyed the librarians.

In the sequel, Then, Felix is on the run with his friend, Zelda. They are trying to find new parents, and are eventually taken in. I can't tell you anything more than that about the plot, because it will give too much away! But I can say that it runs along the same lines as Once - Felix is growing up, but that doesn't mean that making sense of the mad world he finds himself part of is any easier.

Now is rather different. Felix is grown up, and his grand-daughter Zelda is staying with him. Zelda has her own problems - bullies, accidentally setting fire to things and giving her grandfather birthday presents that seem to upset him. Zelda doesn't understand a lot of things, but she does come to understand that there are reasons why her grandfather behaves the way he does, even if she doesn't fully understand the reasons themselves.



Once, Now and Then share many things in common. They are all tales of friendship and family. They are all stories about stories, and what happens when stories aren't enough. They are all heartbreaking and haunting.

I recommend them all. And a healthy supply of tissues.

I'll Be There - A new perspective in contemporary YA fiction

It isn't very often that you come across something that feels entirely fresh and unfazed by the market. So, when those moments come along, you treasure them. Last week I was lucky enough to have Holly Goldberg Sloan's I'll Be There recommended to me, and it didn't take long for me to realise I wasn't going to be able to put it down any time soon.

I'll Be There is a love story, hidden deep in the folds of a family drama, and reading it really does feel like you are discovering something entirely brave and new. The story revolves around Emily and Sam, two teenagers who meet one day at a church. Emily's father has forced her into singing a solo, and she's dreading it - the only thing she is confident about it that she has a horrible singing voice. Hearing the pipe organ playing from the street, Sam walks into the same church, and takes a seat in the very back row.

From here, chance encounters and decisions made in the moment forge a path down which Emily and Sam are guided. This is a book written from an eagle-eye perspective, swooping down on character after character, each providing a small piece of the puzzle, from Sam's younger brother, Riddle, to his dangerously unhinged father, including along the way a black bear, a cattle driver and a hotel cleaning lady. Every character is observed in beautiful, subtle detail. Take Riddle, for example. Riddle is autistic, but we are never told. Instead, through scene after scene, we are shown how he likes to carry a telephone directory around with him in which he draws intricate diagrams of machines and engines, and how he bonds with Emily's family through the dog and her mother's 'dump cake'.

The story is told by a removed narrator who seems to have no emotional insight into the story he is telling. For some reason I cannot fathom, even after reading this book twice, I can't shake the feeling that this adds to the book's emotional depth. The perspective is so emotionally removed that the big scenes deliver a huge punch, more so than most first-person narratives, and if you're anything like me, you'll be dying to read it again soon after you've finished it the first time.


Sloan invites the reader to judge characters by their actions, not their thoughts, and there is something incredibly admirable about that. By viewing Emily and Sam's world from the clouds, Sloan is able to trace fate's path through their lives, examining each and every person who makes an impact on their stories.

I'll Be There seems to me an extremely important and interesting addition to the world of contemporary realistic YA, and I've spent the last few days heartily recommending it to EVERYONE.

So, you know, go read it. Go love it, go pass it on. You won't be able to resist. Promise.