by Matt Goodfellow
illustrated by Joe Todd-Stanton
“Teachers pass me in the corridor
I feel their eyes slide over me
like every bruise
and scratch
and scrape
is another nail in the coffin
of the kind of kid
they think I am. ”
Rarely have we waited so impatiently for the return of a book character- or rather, characters. Because it wasn’t just Nate who cemented a place in our hearts in The Final Year, it was also his life-affirming mum, her constant best pal, Auntie San, brothers Turbo-Terror Dyl and taciturn but pensive Jax and of course Natey’s closer-than-close friends: gentle artistic Caleb and the vivacious PS. A whole cast shook us up, made us shed a few… and then settled in with us. And so, we welcomed The First Year with joy and relief.
We join Nate as he and his friends race through the summer in a riot of bikes. Little brother, Dylan, is fully recovered from his heart operation and is in peak 'spidey' mode. The next challenge ahead is big school which brings the return of bully, Turner and Nate’s renewed efforts to control his inner ‘Beast’. Then there comes the unexpected return of his absent dad with, the impact of this reverberating through every single member of Nate’s family. At least Nate knows now that he can draw on his recently sparked creativity, putting down and spinning out words in his ideas book. And then, of course, there are his friends –joined now by the astute and beautifully self-possessed Muna. Together, they form “four corners of a square” walking alongside each other, always present for each other.
There are so many interconnected themes to explore in this pacy blank verse novel. As with its predecessor, the explorations of family and friendship run very deep. There’s also some superb nuanced observations of and challenges to how children are too readily labelled, sometimes even written off. Goodfellow greets each of his characters with extreme compassion- even children who bully, even parents who walk away. And, always, he offers us something still far too scarce for children’s fiction: a solid, multilayered portrayal of (Northern) working class everydayness which eschews sentimentality and welcomes its beating heart.
(n.b.: single parent family; Caleb is a boy of colour; Muna is of Indian heritage). Age 9-12, Paperback 463pp
Themes: Families