Sweet Clarinet - Softcover

Riordan, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019275050X ISBN 13: 9780192750501

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2000

Synopsis

Billy thought wartime was fun: fiery skies, playing amongst the rubble. Then a bomb falls on the shelter where he and his mother are taking refuge. Waking in hospital horribly burned, he longs for death until a precious gift from a soldier similarly disfigured gives him hope and a reason to live.

About this title

Review

When Billy is hideously scarred by the bomb that leaves him both homeless and orphaned, his only dream is of dying so that he can be rid of the tremendous pain that the physical and mental scars of the Blitz inflicted. But when a wounded soldier makes him the gift of a clarinet, Billy begins to once more face up to life and a future he once believed held nothing for him.

Sweet Clarinet is an affecting and moving story of darkness and light for young, adult readers. Simple and to the point, yet somehow deeply poetic, James Riordan¹s matter-of-fact approach touches the heart as he tells of Billy's lonely journey to the very pit of despair, bringing him slowly back into a world where music and friendship offer him the sense of hope he thought he had lost as a child in war-torn London. --Susan Harrison

Review

Riordan skilfully has Billy tell his own moving story, thereby capturing the reader's empathy and creating a compulsion to keep the pages turning (Books for Keeps )

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019275050X
• ISBN 13: 9780192750501
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144