Pictures in the Dark - Softcover

Cross, Gillian

3.63

103 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192754289 ISBN 13: 9780192754288

Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr, 2005

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Charlie is always trying to find unusual things to capture on camera and takes a chance photograph in the dark of something swimming in the river. He thinks he knows what it was, but no one believes him. When the photo's displayed at school, new boy Peter seems fascinated. It seems bizarre.
But Peter's weird?when he looks at people in a particular way, odd things seem to happen. As Peter becomes an outsider Charlie gets involved, worried that Peter's being bullied. Soon Charlie finds himself unravelling a mystery that's too strange to imagine?one that becomes a matter of life and
death.

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About the Author:

Other publications by the author include: The Demon Headmaster series, The Dark Ground, Calling a Dead Man, Wolf, On the Edge and The Great Elephant Chase. Gillian Cross is also the winner of the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Children's Novel Award, and the Smarties Prize.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Cross (New World, 1995, etc.) tautly combines a mystery with a compassionate novel about the healing power of friendship and love. Teenage Charlie Willcox is an amateur photographer who captures the image of a strange animal swimming in the river behind the Luttrells' house. The animal--actually an otter--is only the first part of the puzzle, because the Luttrells themselves are even stranger. The father is cold and hostile, the mother nervous, daughter Jennifer evasive, and son Peter--the oddest of all--a socially awkward boy who is bullied at school and abused at home, regularly locked up in the family's backyard shed. While Mr. Luttrell sets traps for the otter, Charlie befriends Peter, who warms to the kind attention. Although the story is set in contemporary Scotland, American readers will find it accessible, with only a few regional terms scattered about. The depiction of high school life is sharp, especially the bullying of Peter, which leads to his nearly drowning. In the deeply satisfying conclusion, it is Charlie who rescues his friend, but it is the salvation of the Luttrell family that readers will cheer. Persuasive and resonant. (Fiction. 12+) -- Copyright �1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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