Coram Boy - Softcover

Gavin, Jamila

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1405277033 ISBN 13: 9781405277037

Publisher: Egmont Books Ltd, 2015

Synopsis

The Whitbread 2000 Book of the Year is a haunting and captivating work of historical fiction for children.

The Coram man takes babies and money from desperate mothers, promising to deliver them safely to a Foundling Hospital in London. Instead, he murders them and buries them by the roadside, to the helpless horror of his mentally ill son, Mish.

Mish saves one, Aaron, who grows up happily unaware of his history, proving himself a promising musician.  As Aaron's new life takes him closer to his real family, the watchful Mish makes a terrible mistake, delivering Aaron and his best friend Toby back into the hands of the Coram man.

It tells the story of a dark time in English history. Fans of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Goodnight Mr Tom will love this. A great read for children aged 10+.

Look out for Jamilla's other titles:

The Eye of the Horse

The Robber Baron's Daughter

The Track of the Wind

Wheel of Surya

Coram Boy won the 2000 Whitbread Children's Book of the Year, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and has been adapted into a highly acclaimed stage play.

Jamila Gavin was born in Mussoorie, India, in the foothills of the Himalayas. With an Indian father and an English mother, she inherited two rich cultures which ran side by side throughout her life, and which always made her feel she belonged to both countries.

The family finally settled in England where Jamila completed her schooling, was a music student, worked for the BBC and became a mother of two children. It was then that she began writing children’s books, and felt a need to reflect the multi-cultural world in which she and her children now lived.

About this title

Review:

Eighteenth-century England is the setting for Jamilla Gavin's sweeping saga of growing-up, struggle, tradition and corruption. From an acorn of an idea about a real-life good Samaritan of yesteryear, the author has crafted a satisfying, if occasionally painful, novel that spans the lives of several fortunate and unfortunate young people of the day.

The author has researched her backdrop very well, and the atmospheric sights and sounds of the time are both vivid and captivating. Readers will smell the dirty streets and close-living of urban London, revel in the summer splendour of the finest country houses and then flinch when the harshness of life for the poorest souls is revealed in uncomfortable detail.

For in the late 1700s your circumstance of birth meant everything. Toby and Aaron may both find themselves living at Captain Thomas Coram's Hospital for parentless children, but their histories are as far apart as they could possibly be. Toby has been rescued from a life of slave labour in a faraway country; Aaron is the illegitimate son of the heir to a large country estate. They are watched over by Mish--a simple soul who has been with them since their arrival. His devotion to them is absolute, but his motives are not altogether straightforward. Could this curious man really be Meshak, the son of a wicked child-killer who was hanged at the gallows for his crimes?

Coram Boy is a glorious web of changing fortunes and subtle intrigues. There is tragedy and corruption, hope and evil. Sometimes brutal and sometimes unceasingly bleak, the genre of historical fiction has rarely been this good. It's undoubtedly the kind of book that wins awards. (Age 12 and over) --John McLay

From the Author:

Jamila Gavin was born in Mussoorie, India, in the foothills of the Himalayas. With an Indian father and an English mother, she inherited two rich cultures which ran side by side throughout her life, and which always made her feel she belonged to both countries.

The family finally settled in England where Jamila completed her schooling, was a music student, worked for the BBC and became a mother of two children. It was then that she began writing children’s books, and felt a need to reflect the multi-cultural world in which she and her children now lived.

About this edition

• Publisher: Egmont Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1405277033
• ISBN 13: 9781405277037
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368