Where Your Wings Were by David Almond
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In one of the many youth hostels in the lake district, sat on a small rather untidy bookshelf I found this children’s book. It’s only short containing a few gripping stories from David Almond’s book ‘Counting Stars’. I picked it up and couldn’t put it down. It was an education, the subject wasn’t always pleasant. I was quite surprised at some of the references to smoking, crime and sex. Yet these references were so subtle and the text had such a beautiful haunting way of pulling me along.
It reminded me of the difference in what I saw in my parents relationship before and after getting together with my first boyfriend. It was like a light had suddenly been turned on. I picked up on looks across the dinner table, subtle touches and actions that I’d never noticed before.
Recently I observed a primary school class who were having David Almond’s book Skellig read to them. It had the kids hooked. When the teacher closed the book, after reading only a few pages, the class of ten-year-olds began a loud and opinionated debate about the book so far that would have kept any adult on their toes.
Kate - Words jumble together trying to describe the object in question: she is clever, but not the cleverest; she is pretty, but not the prettiest; she can write a sentence, or even a thousand sentences strung together –but neither entirely concise nor clear; she is a scientist, inquisitive, precise; she is an artist, open, distracted. She is me.
