THE SPINDLERS took us into a dark
underworld in the company of Liza, who is searching for her brother Patrick. We
do quite like the idea of a parallel, underground world, and it reminded of us
of other books we’ve read,
like the Harry Potter books, THE HOBBIT and THE BORROWERS, where there are
different universes that not everyone can see.
We talked about the things that scare us: a
haunted room at school, spooky noises at night time that turn out to be
something normal, like a cat sharpening its claws, or a creaking hamster wheel,
but which are terrifying when you don’t know what they are.
It’s at night when the ordinary turns spooky – you don’t want a boiler or a whirring laptop in
your room that might run wild with your imagination in the dark – so Liza is
very brave to go down into the basement to rescue her brother.
And some things, like spiders, we agreed
are creepy even in the daylight. If you’re really arachnophobic you probably wouldn’t pick this book up, you’d be too scared by the spider on the cover. But we liked the big
bold title, and the colour purple, and we loved the illustrations.
We found out that Lauren Oliver was
inspired to write THE SPINDLERS by her own sister, and her best friend, and we
talked about whether we’d put
our own friends into a novel. We’ve got some brilliant friends between the group, from all around the
world, and we agreed they’re so
different it would make a really interesting book.
Liza makes a new friend in the story, a rat
called Mirabella. It’s an
unusual name for a rat, but then Mirabella isn’t your ordinary rodent: she wears a wig, lipstick and a dress, for
starters (see Ruby’s
picture!). We thought that perhaps she’d been born with a more ratty name, and then changed it because she
wanted to be posh. Not everyone thought they’d make friends with a rat – but Mercedes definitely would: she used
to have a pet rat, and they’re her
favourite animal.
We had a really good discussion about why
boys don’t like to read
books that have girls as the main character, even though girls don’t mind a book with a boy hero. And we
know we’re in for an
interesting time with our next book, VIKING BOY. Will the girls like it, or
will it just be too gory and full of fighting? We’re looking forward to meeting the author and talking to him about it
next time.
We have two reviewers this month, Grace and
Alice, both age 9, who each give THE SPINDLERS five stars:
Grace says
“I really
liked THE SPINDLERS because it was full of adventure”
And Alice says:
“I think
they’re really scary!
They take souls away for living people. I read this book once and I really
enjoyed it”
Thank you for a very good discussion, everyone: have your questions ready for Tony Bradman, author of VIKING BOY, who will be joining us at our next meeting, on 23 January.
