Talking about THE SPINDLERS 5 December 2012

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We had a rather scary time this month, thanks to Lauren Oliver’s brilliant, crazy imagination.

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.