Week One

  

Key stage 3 Read of the week:

Noughts and Crosses, Malorie Blackman

Sephy is a Cross -- a member of the dark-skinned ruling class. Callum is a Nought -- a “colourless” member of the underclass who were once slaves to the Crosses. The two have been friends since early childhood, but that’s as far as it can go. In their world, Noughts and Crosses simply don’t mix. Against a background of prejudice and distrust, intensely highlighted by violent terrorist activity, a romance builds between Sephy and Callum -- a romance that is to lead both of them into terrible danger. Can they possibly find a way to be together?

There is a great video from the author here, that explores anti-immigration feeling and the link to her book.

Key stage 4/5 Read of the week

Ian McEwan’s symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from this master of English prose.

On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.

She smiled. Was he pretending to be jealous to conceal the fact that he was? She no longer understood him. They had fallen out of touch at Cambridge. It had been too difficult to do anything else. She changed the subject.

 ‘The Old Man says you’re going to be a doctor.’

 ‘I’m thinking about it.’

 ‘You must love the student life.’

 He looked away again, but this time for only a second or less, and when he turned to her she thought she saw a touch of irritation. Had she sounded condescending?

She saw his eyes again, green and orange flecks, like a boy’s marble. When he spoke he was perfectly pleasant. 

‘I know you never liked that sort of thing, Cee. But how else do you become a doctor?’

 ‘That’s my point. Another six years. Why do it?’ 

He wasn’t offended. She was the one who was over-interpreting, and jittery in his presence, and she was annoyed with herself. He was taking her question seriously. ‘No one’s really going to give me work as a landscape gardener. I don’t want to teach, or go in for the civil service. And medicine interests me…’ 

He broke off as a thought occurred to him.

 ‘Look, I’ve agreed to pay your father back. That’s the arrangement.’

 ‘That’s not what I meant at all.’ 

She was surprised that he should think she was raising the question of money. That was ungenerous of him. Her father had subsidised Robbie’s education all his life. Had anyone ever objected? She had thought she was imagining it, but in fact she was right – there was something trying in Robbie’s manner lately. He had a way of wrong-footing her whenever he could. 

Two days before he had rung the front doorbell – in itself odd, for he had always had the freedom of the house. When she was called down, he was standing outside asking in a loud, impersonal voice if he could borrow a book. As it happened, Polly was on all fours, washing the tiles in the entrance hall. Robbie made a great show of removing his boots which weren’t dirty at all, and then, as an afterthought, took his socks off as well, and tiptoed with comic exaggeration across the wet floor. 

There is a great film available. Here is the trailer: