Coram Boy - Softcover

Jamila Gavin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1405277033 ISBN 13: 9781405277037

Publisher: Egmont Books Ltd, 2015

Synopsis

A vivd, compelling and harrowing tale from Whitbread award winning Jamila Gavin. 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.

About this title

About 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. Since her first book, The Magic Orange Tree was published in 1979, she has been writing steadily, producing collections of short stories and several teenage novels for the whole age range from six to sixteen, including Grandpa Chatterji, which was short-listed for the Smarties Award and was dramatised for television on Channel 4 Schools, and The Surya Trilogy of which the first, The Wheel of Surya, was runner-up for the Guardian Children's Fiction Award in 1992. Her book, Coram Boy, a novel for young adults, was published to critical acclaim in 2000 and won the Children's Whitbread Award, as well as being short listed for the Carnegie Medal. It was subsequently adapted for the stage and had two highly successful runs at the National Theatre in 2005/6 and on Broadway.

From School Library Journal:

Gr 7-9-Mystery, romance, horror, and adventure overlap in this story set in England in 1741. It begins with the brutal work of the "Coram man," a shady character who deals in unwanted children, whom he either abandons, buries, or sells into slavery. Accompanying this evil man is his son, Meshak, who appears to be slow-witted, but who has witnessed the horrifying nature of his father's work. One night, the boy rescues a baby born to Melissa, whom Meshak calls "his angel," and spirits the infant away to the Coram Hospital, a home for abandoned children. A separate story line involves teenaged Alexander, the baby's aristocratic father who is unaware of his son's existence, and his friend Thomas, raised in poverty. Alexander has pursued a career in music, which causes him to be disinherited from his family's fortune. Readers also follow the story of Melissa and Alexander's son, Aaron, who at age eight leaves the orphanage and is apprenticed to a musician, and his black friend, Toby, who is unknowingly apprenticed to the evil Coram man, now disguised as a wealthy pillar of society. Only when Aaron discovers his own musical abilities do the narratives begin to mesh. The author skillfully weaves the various threads together, and the characters are well drawn. While the obscure subject matter and the relatively slow beginning might deter some readers, those who stick with the compelling story will be rewarded with story lines that come together neatly and build suspense until the end.

Kristen Oravec, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Strongsville, OH

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

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