Well-drawn characters in local artist’s ‘page-turner for children’
WESTON artist Caroline Conran has turned her hand to writing a children’s book.
Caroline paints colourfully, says Lauraine Klugman. “My surprise was that she also writes excitingly of the fictitious life of a boy in Northern Ireland.
With a punchy start, and a flavour of times past in the writing (though not in the setting – this is after ‘the Troubles’) there’s a feeling of earlier children’s writers such as Seraillier, even Blyton.
So we read of a boy not constantly on his mobile, but instead a keen observer and collector of curious situations.
A boy who is a bit of a loner but learns to relate well to many older and younger people in his town.
This is a colourful, well-paced pageturner which this adult enjoyed reading twice.
Robbie’s own thoughts and kind of ‘diary’ comments sit convincingly and descriptively among the narrator’s, which help the reader understand his feelings towards his very strict father and his softer, warmer mother.
Early on his family home life is often quarrelsome; Robbie also encounters very nasty bullying in his classroom. Caroline knows childhood – and gets inside the feelings of a child.
Thanks to his mum, Robbie makes friends and gets involved with children his own age and older, and the feeling of community around him, (in a fictitious town the locals once described as a ‘toilet’) is strong and triumphant.
He is lucky in having good teachers, though one or two are bad apples. There is shock and tragedy for him along the way.
Early on he realises he wants to be a detective, asks for binoculars and his searches help clear a way for his happier life.
He ‘finds’ a badly treated dog and becomes a fan, makes good adult friends, and he’s lucky too, with a mum who joins him becoming part of a community play and drama. Characters are plentiful and welldrawn.
Caroline’s modest book cover doesn’t do justice to her colourful prose. Tension and adventures are well written.
Chapters are short and longer, so a chapter a night before sleeping would be something to look forward to. Descriptions of the landscape and terrain, among which various adventures unfold, life continues and a few ‘baddies’ are discovered and captured, and the goodies finally win. A fun story for children upwards of seven.”