Phil Earle

Told from the point of view of 2 brothers who live on an estate in England. Jammy has signed up with his best mate ( his girlfriend's brother) to fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan as soon as he turns 18. His younger brother Sonny is 16 and promises to look after his girlfriend Cam until Jammy gets back. Told in alternating chapters, Jammy is confronted by the horrors of war when he witnesses a young boy to whom he gave a soccer ball, blown apart by the same ball (now loaded with IUDs) show more and then further terrible things happen. Meanwhile back in England, Sonny falls for Cam and tries to keep the "gang" together but one of them drifts off into a world of hard drugs. When Jammy eventually comes home, he is not the same person he was before, and when everyone starts calling him a hero, his PTSD catches up with him and with the news about Sonny and Cam he completely snaps.
The majority of this story is Sonny's - he has the most chapters and especially at the end, we hear his thoughts while he chases Jammy through the estate when he goes on a wrecking spree. This makes the book somewhat unbalanced - you feel like the author is writing too much about what THEY know - i.e life on the estate and therefore the Afghanistan part doesn't quite ring true. Earle is , I think, trying to shed light on why so many soldiers suffer from PTSD and at the same time, he is looking at the definition of a "hero" - why should you be called one if you don't think you have done anything heroic?
For older readers due to the sex between Sonny and Cam, the drug use - pot and heroin - and the crimes committed by the gang. show less

Book 202 - Phil Earle - When the sky falls

In WW2 there used to be a British soldier who, when the air raid sirens went off, had to rush to the city zoo and stand with his rifle aimed at the lions…just in case. In the acknowledgments after the novel…Phil Earle tells this astonishing story. This is his twist on that tale.

Joseph is a rare child in the war as he is evacuated in to London to stay with a friend of the family. Joseph is hurting…Joseph has lost so much and is angry at the show more world. Mrs F that he is sent to live with is a typical WW2 battling older lady. For so much of the book we wonder if Joseph will ever let us in…away from his mother who doesn’t know how to handle him…away from his father who is away fighting…struggling to fit in at school as although he is brilliant with figures…really struggles with letters…something we discover is linked to dyslexia but back in the 1940s…he sees himself as stupid. It is a heart breaking read and a hard read…as each time we think we have moved forward another pillar comes crashing down around him.

Through this darkness Mrs F, who runs a city zoo, introduces him to Adonis, a silver-backed gorilla. During each air raid she goes to the zoo…rifle in hand…in preparation for what she must do in case a bomb lands and Adonis is freed.

The climax of the novel shows there was nothing easy during wartime…but we cheer with the characters and we cry with them through every chapter, tragedy and triumph.

One of the best I have ever read…would be an amazing book for an incredible class project. Simply superb. show less

Charlie Han's troubles are way bigger than he is. At school, he's branded an outsider, a loser - the tiny kid from the Chinese Chippy. His only ally is Sinus Sedgely, the only lad in school with a worse reputation than Charlie himself. Life at home isn't much better. His dad is better with a wok than he is with words, and his mum is suffocating the life out of Charlie, wrapping him in enough cotton wool to fill a pharmacy. But when a new passion leads Charlie to the mother of all show more confrontations, he finds his mum's been hiding a massive secret. A secret that whilst shocking, might actually lead Charlie to feeling ten feet tall. The Bubble Wrap Boy is about the terrors of friendship, family and one undersized boy's ability to think BIG... show less

One of the Barrington Stoke super readable texts with sepia paper and dyslexic friendly font. Unfortunately, there is a lot of urban British slang in this book that may not translate well to my Australian teenage readers from my Library but nevertheless the story is engaging enough. I was interested to read the notes at the end where Phil Earle wrote that it was based on the true story of a woman who fought to keep her dead husband's voice being used on a train line in London. Nice twist show more with the author using the friendship between two teenage boys - one who has lost his father and gone off the rails and the other who looks for any way that he can save his mate from wrecking himself. show less