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. The breakdown of the words and the different font sizes at parts to emphasise the loudness was absolutely effective, almost poetic. 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.

A tender and beautifully written story of family, nature, imagination and the fear that comes with change. I was at my last school for 4 years and we had ********* book fairs every term – and every term, I was disappointed by the narrow range of books. The world is not a simple place, and Balen draws a touching, spikey, sparky, dangerous, heartful portrait of a girl slowly learning that. Furthermore, how can October hope to leave the landscape she knows and loves to live with her mother in an alien city, attend school, while worrying about her father and then their future? I have even talked the head into a little revamp of the library so that we can display them properly!

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. possibly the best father/daughter relationship i've ever read, a very relatable and painful portrayal of anxiety, guilt and abandonment and the heart-full feeling of loving someone and something you protect. And Stig’s progress from chick to fledgling to owl is captured beautifully in the illustrations by Angela Harding. October lives with her father deep in the woods; her mother, unable to cope with living ‘wild’, left when October was small and although she does try to keep in contact with her daughter, October doesn’t want to have anything to do with her mother. And, as October fights to find the space to be wild in the whirling chaos of the world beyond the woods, it is also a feast for the soul.

Through October’s passionate and, at the same time, innocent thoughts, we enter her world surrounded by wilderness and freedom. It is a perfect middle grade book that not only brings us to a beautiful wild adventure, but also teaches us that it’s okay to be different. I would be interested to know what the author’s definition of wild is and why it is something to be valued.

October lives in an isolated part of the woods with her father- no neighbours, no friends, no schooling and the woman who used to be her mother long gone.