By: Glenda Millard
Genre: YFB - General fiction (Children's/Teenage)
Published by: Allen & Unwin
Published: 27/1/16
ISBN: 9781743315897

Description

Alice is fifteen, with hair as red as fire and skin as pale as bone, but something inside her is broken. She has acquired brain injury, the result of an assault, and her words come out slow and slurred. But when she writes, heartwords fly from her pen.


She writes poems to express the words she can't say and leaves them in unexpected places around the town. Manny was once a child soldier. He is sixteen and has lost all his family. He appears to be adapting to his new life in this country, where there is comfort and safety, but at night he runs, barefoot, to escape the memory of his past.


When he first sees Alice, she is sitting on the rusty roof of her river-house, looking like a carving on an old-fashioned ship sailing through the stars.


Sf Book Of The Month


Review

A truly moving story that celebrates life, love, family and friendship.


Alice is fifteen, but due to an awful attack her brain is damaged and, as she says, her electrics go haywire.
Her younger brother Joey and her grandmother hold the family together.


Alice has trouble speaking but she doesn’t have trouble writing, drawing or making the most beautiful fishing lures. When she starts leaving anonymous poems around town, the one person who notices them is Manny.


Manny is from Sierra Leone and is learning about life is Australia. When Alice and Manny meet, sparks fly and trouble follows. Will Alice be able to follow her dream?


I love Glenda Millard’s writing and this story is no exception. She keeps the reader enthralled as she takes us on a journey of courage and love. She highlights the best and worst of the human spirit and that makes this a book that is hard to put down.


A perfect story for Year 8 and up, and it would make a wonderful addition to any classroom reading list.


Reviewed by Michelle