Book Info
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Hardback240 pages
Author's Website
www.davidalmond.com/Publisher
Hachette Children's BooksPublication date
6th November 2008ISBN
9780340881989Children's Author 'Like-for-Like' recommendations
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Jackdaw Summer
David Almond
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Lovereading4kids Price: £8.24
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Julia Eccleshare's comment:
In his exceptional, delicate writing, prize-winning author David Almond weaves together many strands which together give an intimate insight into the thinking of two boys growing up in his familiar Northumberland countryside. Against a background of fighter planes swooping overhead, the boys follow the jackdaw to the unexpected find of an abandoned baby. How they interpret the jackdaw, their reactions to finding the baby and their interactions with each other make a moving and thoughtful story told with exceptional elegance.
Lovereading comment:
This stunning new novel explores themes of friendship, loyalty, savagery and goodness, in writing which is accessible, contemporary and quite brilliant. It explores what it is to be wild - what it means to grow up. it has elements of Lord of the Flies in it, and is tautly and expertly written.
David Almond novels in order of publication: Skellig, Kit’s Wilderness, Heaven Eyes, Counting Stars, Secret Heart, The Fire-Eaters, Clay and most recently Jackdaw Summer.
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Synopsis
Jackdaw Summer by David AlmondFrom the winner of the Whitbread Children's Book Award" and the Carnegie Medal" comes an extraordinary new novel ... One hot summer's day a jackdaw leads two boys into an ancient farmhouse. Every summer Liam and Max roam the wild countryside of Northumberland - but this year things are different. Liam and Max are no longer children. On the day they follow the jackdaw, things will change forever. In the farmhouse they find a baby, wrapped in a blanket. Liam takes the baby home and his life is never the same. It's time for him to grow up...
Reviews
'Almond manages to make a work of art out of the simplest words' The Times
'David Almond is a very fine writer. One of the finest we have' Michael Morpurgo
'There really is no one quite like Almond writing in children's or adult's fiction today' The Times
'It's an extraordinary profound book, no matter how old the reader' Whitbread on Skellig
'funny, mysterious, moving, frightening, and so deftly constructed as to be fiercely compelling... not beneath the attention of adult readers' The Sunday Times on Clay
'Great literature. Beyond classification' Guardian
About The Author
David Almond was our Guest Editor in September 2011 CLICK HERE to see his choices.
March 2010 David Almond won The Hans Christian Andersen Award which is presented every other year to a living author and illustrator whose complete works have made a lasting contribution to children's literature.
Julia Eccleshare on David Almond:
One of the best-loved and finest writers of today, David Almond made an immediate impact with Skellig, his first book. The moving story of a boy’s discovery of a strange creature in the shed which can be interpreted in many ways introduced some to the recurrent themes of David Almond’s writing. Infused with a touch of magic or the supernatural or ‘belief’, David Almond writes sensitively about the inner complexities of growing up. Much influenced by the landscape of Tyneside where he was brought up and still lives, David Almond’s books have a strong sense of place especially in titles such as Heaven’s Eyes, The Fire-Eater and Kit’s Wilderness. Although often clearly set in some particular time, there is a timeless quality to David Almond’s stories which give them enduring appeal.
A Note from the Author
"I grew up in a big extended Catholic family [in the north of England]. I listened to the stories and songs at family parties. I listened to the gossip that filled Dragone's coffee shop. I ran with my friends through the open spaces and the narrow lanes. We scared each other with ghost stories told in fragile tents on dark nights. We promised never-ending friendship and whispered of the amazing journeys we'd take together. I sat with my grandfather in his allotment, held tiny Easter chicks in my hands while he smoked his pipe and the factory sirens wailed and larks yelled high above. I trembled at the images presented to us in church, at the awful threats and glorious promises made by black-clad priests with Irish voices. I scribbled stories and stitched them into little books. I disliked school and loved the library, a little square building in which I dreamed that books with my name on them would stand one day on the shelves. Skellig, my first children's novel, came out of the blue, as if it had been waiting a long time to be told. It seemed to write itself. It took six months, was rapidly taken by Hodder Children's Books and has changed my life. By the time Skellig came out, I'd written my next children's novel, Kit's Wilderness. These books are suffused with the landscape and spirit of my own childhood. By looking back into the past, by re-imagining it and blending it with what I see around me now, I found a way to move forward and to become something that I am intensely happy to be: a writer for children."
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