October, October: WINNER OF THE YOTO CARNEGIE MEDAL 2022

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Jumanji meets Ready Player One in this fast-paced adventure featuring incredible real-life heroes, from the internationally bestselling author of The Uncommoners series. I have even talked the head into a little revamp of the library so that we can display them properly!

Her debut novel, The Space We're In , was highly commended for the Branford Boase Award, October, October won the Yoto Carnegie Medal and the UKLA Book Award, and The Light in Everything was shortlisted for the Yoto Carnegie Medal. The critics are describing it as a future classic and our young reviewer certainly agrees that it is an amazing book that has been published by Bloomsbury.The character of October had me questioning many of my own perspectives on belonging and the need to be wild and free. I cared for her dad, and her mum, and Stig, and her newfound schoolfriends, and by the end I was just happy to see them be happy, even if I didn't think Balen put quite enough thought into resolving the issues that were making them unhappy in the first place.

Balen’s immensely touching, well-written story about the pleasures and perils of wildness combines a lush, autumnal sensibility with a perceptive story about a transitional phase in a young girl’s life. And yes, that by the end of October, October, while October might now have a more positive attitude towards both her mother and also city living in general, that she is not made by Katya Balen as having to apologise for her outbursts, for her anger, that from the beginning to the end of October, October there is a clear textual thread of demonstrating that October's mother has very much deserved her daughter's frustration, annoyance and fury, I am indeed and definitely so so so textually appreciative and even majorly grateful for this (as well as constantly smiling). Some big questions were posed and left unanswered (Why, for example, would October's mum get in trouble for not sending her daughter to school, when October lived in the woods with her father for years without a scrap of formal education and there were no repercussions? There was just the right amount of choice to suit everyone without being overwhelming and I received comments from parents and staff about the quality of books offered compared to previous sales which have always been based around current crazes and well known celebrity authors. Balen is careful to show the consequences of October’s decisions and to present advantages as well as disadvantages so it’s not just countryside = good, city = bad.

So, even though this is the first of the Carnegie Medal Shortlist that I have read this year, I loved it and, yes, I believe it should win! October shuts down and holds ferociously to a ring that she found buried in the woods, believing that if only she can find the matching ring of the pair, she can complete its story for her father and bring him and their old life back to her.

However on October's eleventh birthday, everything changes in October, October, as when October's father falls out of a tree and is rushed to hospital, October is pulled from her treasured and beloved woods, from the only home she has ever known and is placed into her mother's care in London, where trapped in a tiny house in a busy and frenetic metropolis and with a woman that October has not seen in years, has no interest in meeting and getting to know, October struggles to understand this new world, often lashing out, often reacting with anger and frustration, but also slowly learning to adjust and to even finally be able to a least somewhat appreciate both her mother and that there might indeed be some positives after all outside of the woods. It means that she knows what they’ll eat from what they’ve grown, how to operate machinery, grow and harvest from the vegetable tunnel, and chop and stack the firewood. Yet, when her mum reappears on October’s twelfth birthday, Dad is horribly injured in an accident and October is forced to leave her wild home in the woods to stay in London with her mum. I read it as part of a children’s literature module for a recently studied degree and I couldn’t put it down. I adore the character development and characters in general, like how October gradually learns to love her mother and her father, as well as the fact that she learns you just have to let some things go.It’s a fantastic independent book seller that will actually be responsive and select appropriate books for you. But, with the fate of two worlds in their hands, will the twins be able to work together for once to defeat Morg and her dark magic? Everything in the city is wrong, from the cars and underground trains that make her sick to school, where the other kids tease her.