Scribble Boy

A while back, I read a children's book by Phillip Ridley called Krindlekrax which I found to be a superb book for my level 4c readers at school. It had SO much you could discuss during guided reading- Suspense, characterisation and idiosyncrasies, dealing with death, descriptive passages for creating a certain mood and lots more. Therefore, I was really excited to find a secondhand copy of Scribbleboy and hoped it would be just as good and therefore, might be a book to buy for school so the children could compare an author's writing. Scribbleboy tells the story of Bailey Silk who has moved to a new area full of grey concrete. He's dealing with his own issues as his mother disappeared off one night. He meets a range of quirky new characters in the area- Ziggy, a boy in a wheelchair who tells him of the legend of Scribbleboy, a genius graffiti-artist who made the walls beautiful but who then disappeared- Ziggy being the only one who still remembers him. He meets Tiffany Spangle, an ice-cream Doctor who slowly comes more into his life, Levi Toot and his homeboys. As with Ridley's previous book, all the characters have really discussable and obvious idiosyncrasies- they're all a little crazy and like my group of boys who I had for Guided reading of Krindlekrax , they'd love this one too as it's all a little loopy! The book has the obvious merit of being the possibility of opening a dialogue and debate over whether it is right to graffiti and why or why not. There is mystery with who Scribbleboy was and is and why they disappeared. I personally found that there was rather too much dialogue in this one- it lacked the description that Krindlekrax had. I also found the idiosyncrasies of the characters in this case, rather irritating but then I am not a boy of 10 something. This is an interesting book and I would recommend it to anyone with 9-10 year old kids. There's the inevitable passages they might go 'Ewwww! to but there's a lot that would be great for discussion. If there are any teachers amongst you who would like my questions that I used for Krindlekrax, do pop me an e-mail address in the comments-box, I would be happy to share them. By the way, did you know that www.foyles.com sell second hand books as well! So you could try there as well as Amazon!