As it was the last Book Club of the academic year I said that rather than doing individual book reviews that we would do a collective one, that they didn’t need to do any writing! And although they love writing the reviews and getting letters back from the authors, they enjoyed sitting back and letting me do the work.
I have never seen Book Club so enthused about a book. In fact they could not sit down as they told me how much they loved it.
Here is what they said.
Shadow is ‘Page-turning’, ‘gripping’, ‘the best book I have read’, ‘I read it in two days’ and ‘It made me a cry’.
They all agreed that Shadow was a difficult book to read because of the subject matter and that at times it was harrowing. But Amy said, ‘It’s good to have an emotional book so we can actually feel like he [the main character, Aman] felt.’
They all learnt a lot about Afghanistan and the Taliban but liked that it was child-friendly. The violence was real and scary but not too bad that they didn’t want to read it. They all thought most of Aman’s story was awful and sad but as he told it they could not put it down and wanted to know how he got out of Afghanistan into England. Amy thought the grandmother’s death was the worst bit and that it made her cry.
The book is from three different viewpoints; Grandad’s, Matt’s (his grandson) and Aman (Matt’s friend). It tells of Aman’s journey from Afghanistan to England and his ‘imprisonment’ in a Detention Centre after he and his mother are declared as ‘illegal’ by the English authorities. The children could not believe that they were reading about their own country when the police come to take Aman and his mother to the Detention Centre. They said it was horrible, especially the fact that they came in the night and stood and watched them get dressed before they dragged them out into the street.
The different view points didn’t phase the children. They didn’t find it difficult to get into the shoes of the character that was speaking and Mary Ellen really liked the way it was written and thought that it made the book easier to read.
Jake said he thought that the Detention Centre seemed like a home at first but then he realised it was horrible and Katerina didn’t like that they shut young children up there and remembered the little girl by the door wanting to get out.
We all agreed that the book should have had a different title and that maybe it was called Shadow because M. Morpurgo’s books about animals sell. Roman thought that the book should have had stars in the title and we all agreed on ‘The Silver Star’ but you will have to read the book to find out why. Jake loved the pictures by Christian Birmingham in the book.
The children were all surprised to find out Shadow’s real identity and Jake had thought that maybe it was just a stray that would die without Aman. And they were shocked about what had happened to Shadow’s owner… but I can’t say too much as it gives the story away.
We concluded that we had learnt a lot about war and refugees and they all said that if a refugee joined their school they would help them and speak to them. Finn told us about new children in his class that had come from different countries.
So we ended the session with them asking about other Michael Morpurgo books and I have promised them Private Peaceful on our return after the summer. I’m glad they liked the book and was really taken aback by their reaction to it. So if you need a book to read over the summer – this is the one. I would say it was suitable for ages 9 plus, but be prepared for a lot of questions about the inhumanity of war and treatment of refugees.
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