St George’s Dragon Readers

The Things We Leave Behind
I really enjoyed this book and I like how the narrator tells her story. I like how the truth isn’t revealed until the end and the ending is very good when everything comes together.

Anita

All That It Ever Meant
I enjoyed the somewhat sentimental themes of this book, and the heavy focus on family life. It presents an interesting narrative, and an interesting main character. I enjoyed the major plot twist, and the aftermath of that realisation. Overall, I would recommend this book.

Ben

Play
'Play' by Luke Palmer is a brilliant book that gives points of view from four boys as they go through secondary school. I think it has an amazing story and once you start reading it you can’t put it down. It covers some difficult topics, but it is written in a good way. I love the adventurous side of the story and you can really relate to the characters as they are just like so many boys that age and you can laugh along with their games and jokes as if you are friends with all of them. All in all, I highly recommend this book to anyone.

Jonny

The Things We Leave Behind
I really enjoyed this book as I found the characters interesting and it had a good plot line. I think that it was easy to relate to and the ending changed my whole perspective when reading the book. This book was engaging as the storyline could happen to anyone.

Sophia

Little Bang
I really enjoyed 'Little Bang', as I think that abortion isn’t a subject talked about often enough, and it’s important to discuss these things more publicly. I thought that Mel and Sid were really well developed characters, and I especially liked the way that Sid helped out Mel and took his responsibilities well as a father. On the other hand, once Mel had had the abortion and had come back from England, I found it incredibly sad that so many people completely disagreed with her choice and thought that it was in her best interests to give her their opinion. I personally believe that it should be the girl’s choice due to the fact that it’s her body. No one should force their beliefs onto her, especially as pregnancy is an incredibly hard thing to go through, particularly without other people’s help. However, I think that the subject of abortion was handled really well, and it was very interesting to see both perspectives from the father and the mother.

Kate

Play
I really enjoyed this book because I could relate as a teenager towards the group, the ending was absolutely brilliant in my opinion capturing Johnny's voice perfectly. Although, yes, it was clearly written by a man and not a young boy, I found it really interesting how the author conveyed the main character's narrative - no spoilers - but like ‘’Come up” and “Green” to describe things ever present in the teenager's lives. At first it was hard to get into, but as soon as I did I was hooked until very end. Overall, a great read and my favourite Carnegie book this year.

Cecile

The Final Year
I really enjoyed this book about a boy finding his place in his school and some of the verse was really nice, but I feel that some of the storyline was limited and it ended very abruptly.

Oliver

Play
A brilliant book that evokes thoughts of childhood, outlining how easy it is to fall into the world of drug dealing and how you need to be careful about who you associate with.

Ben

All That It Ever Meant
It was an interesting book that had a very good ending. However, the beginning was slow moving and hard to get into. The plot twists at the end made you want to read the book again to fully understand what happened.

Rachel