Charlie's Story - Softcover

Friel, Maeve

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1853711837 ISBN 13: 9781853711831

Publisher: Poolbeg Press Ltd, 1994

Synopsis

(The story of 14-year-old Charlotte Collins who lives with her father and grandmother in a suburb of Dublin, and when her classmates discover that she was abandoned by her mother at the age of four, they start to bully her and make her life hell for many months.)

About this title

About the Author:

Educated at University College in Dublin, Maeve Friel's first short story, "Irrational Developments," won the 1990 Sunday Tribune/Hennessy Literary Award for an emerging writer. Subsequently, she has written several books for children, including The Lantern Moon, which was awarded a 1996-97 Bisto Book of the Year Merit Award, The Deerstone, and Distant Voices, both of which were short-listed for the Bisto Book Award. She is a recipient of a Reading Association of Ireland Merit Award. Friel lives with her family in Dublin, Ireland.

From Booklist:

Gr. 6^-10. Charlotte ("Charlie") Collins lives a miserable, hunted existence in Dublin. Once it's discovered that she was the celebrated "abandoned baby" years earlier, left by her unstable mother in a London subway, Charlie has been tormented by the cruel in-crowd at school. Longing for acceptance and for a family that could provide more support, Charlie wanders through her days under a cloud of pain. Not that her father and extended family and several school adults are all unaccepting or totally uncaring--they simply don't realize the force of the enemy the girl faces. Friel has penned a masterful portrait of children's torment of other children and the bleak emotional landscape of a desperate young teen. Granted, an exciting climax resolves a little too neatly and a rescuing friend appears a little too conveniently, but this is nonetheless an extraordinary tale about the power that bullies wield, a bit reminiscent of Cormier's Chocolate War. Anne O'Malley

About this edition

• Publisher: Poolbeg Press Ltd
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1853711837
• ISBN 13: 9781853711831
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112