Luke's Reads: Behind the Scenes

I have recently finished a challenge in which I read 50 books that Michael Grove;s comments prompted three authors and two reporters to choose. The article is here. This challenge has broadened my reading knowledge and nearly put me in an early grave. I found some new favourite books (The London Eye mystery!) and wanted to burn others (How to be topp!). 

The challenge was a very hard project and took a lot of time and hard work from me and my mum Jay who has supported me throughout the challenge and provided most of the books. She was actually the one who suggested that I did the challenge. One day while I was playing video games she got me pause (A feat in itself) and said “I bet you a tenner that you can’t read 50 books in one year!” 

I replied“No problem, prepare to lose your money, Mum” And so the challenge began.   I hope you are ready to experience Luke’s Reads (Behind the scenes).

Pros of the challenge

 I discovered many new books to my liking: things like Ender’s game, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and the London Eye mystery. Because of the challenge I was pushed into new unfamiliar territory and didn’t know what to expect while I was there. It was an interesting experience full of books that it turns out are really good. The most surprising reaction was when I read Swallows and Amazons and found it not that bad. Read the review 

Cons of the challenge

While I did discover some new favourite books the challenge was full of books that I wanted to burn like How to be Topp, the Old Man and the Sea and After the First Death. I HATED these books. The other thing that I hated was when I did not reach my intended target by Christmas. I was incredibly angry and upset when this happened and I felt that getting an extension was like cheating. But in the end I swallowed my pride and took the extension.

My list of 20 books for 11-12 year olds

• Silver Tounge by Charlie Fletcher
• Artemis Fowl  by Eoin Colfer
• Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
• Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver
• The River of Adventure by Enid Blyton
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
• How to be a Pirate by Cressida Cowell
• Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
• The Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan
• Time Riders: Day of the Predator  by Alex Scarrow
• H.I.V.E. by Mark Walden
• C.H.E.R.U.B. :The Recruit by Robert Muchamore
• Heroes of Olympus: the Lost Hero by Rick Riordan
• Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert O'Brien
• The Carpet People by Terry Pratchett
• Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett
• Johnny and the Dead by Terry Pratchett
• The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd
• Enders Game by Orson Scott Card.
• The Magic Scales by Sam Wilding

In Conclusion…

While the challenge was full of obstacles and required lots of time, work and attention it was also educational, interesting and really helped my reading ability. I feel very privileged to be able to do this challenge in the year. I would like to thank my mum Jay and:

Mark Tranter for The Owl Service and A Christmas Carol.

Sarah who sent us When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

Immi Howson  for Mistress Mashem's Repose and People Might Hear You.

I am very grateful to all of these people that helped me and I hope that they say you’re welcome. So to finish off I hope to make those who read my blog laugh by saying I give this challenge 1000/100.   


Jay Writes - 
Thanks also to our friends and well-wishers who left comments on Luke's blog over the year. They have really encouraged him. I think Luke's done a super job with this challenge and I'm proud of him for persevering. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading most of the books along with him (although I was less keen on having to nag him to write the reviews!)

Revisiting The Challenge

Jay Writes -
The more eagle-eyed among you (or anyone who's looked at the masthead lately) will spot that Luke's 50 book challenge was to read and review them by Christmas, and it's now the end of January. So what's the story, morning glory?
Luke was really upset not to have finished the list in time. He's tried so hard and persevered with some books he'd hated - as well as those he loved - instead of reading his normal style of books. It was so dispiriting to have read 41 (and reviewed 39 of them) but not achieve his goal.
I told him not to worry: do what students and professionals have been doing for centuries when faced with a deadline ... request an extension.
Before we started this project, there were loads of books we were unfamiliar with on the list and we weren't entirely sure what we were getting ourselves into.  Now we've had a look at what Luke's achieved (which I hope you'll agree is LOADS) and what is feasible for him to achieve in the coming months and we've made some changes.
1. Timescale - Michael Gove's comment, which sparked this whole thing, was to read them over a year. So, the challenge will run until the end of March, a year from starting it.
2. Substitutions - There are some books on the list that Luke has really hated.  In general, they've been an unhappy combination of a literary style that doesn't suit him and a subject matter he doesn't care about.  To give him 3 wild cards seemed fair.  He could chose 3 books from the list that he really couldn't face and swap them with books his dad and I agreed would be suitable alternatives
3. Tolkien  - The original list featured The Hobbit and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy as one choice.  Luke ploughed through over half of The Fellowship Of The Rings with little enjoyment. We agreed, in the face of more elvish poetry than one could shake a stick at, to go with just reading The Hobbit. That's still 400 pages and a rollicking good read to boot.  We'll leave LOTR til he's a little older.

Luke's made a good start. He's reviewed the 2 books he'd read before Christmas and he's tackled one of the book he was most dreading. He's also a fair way through The Hobbit. He's got 8 books to do in 8 weeks, which will be hard, but I've got faith in him.
And anyway, he played a Wild Card to ditch Little Women, so I know he can do this!

Hunting down the books

Jay Writes -

Hi everyone,

A few people have offered (here or on Facebook or by email) to loan us us some of the books from the list. Below is a list of those we've not got yet. If you have any you'd be willing to lend Luke, could you let us know? I'm running up quite the tab with Amazon - which I must confess isn't unusual for me - but I'd like to only buy those books we can't get elsewhere.

• Swallows and Amazons (promised to be loaned to us)
• The Happy Prince, Oscar Wilde
• The Singing Tree, Kate Seredy
• The Secret Garden (promised to be loaned to us)
• Refuge Boy, Benjamin Zephaniah
• The Tygrine Cat, Inbali Iserles
• Carry On Jeeves (got lots of Jeeves but not this one)
• The Story of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
• Little Women, L M Alcott (promised to be loaned to us)
• How To Be Topp, Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
• Animal Farm (I think I had this at one point but can't find it on the shelves)
• After The First Death, Robert Cormier
• The London Eye Mystery, Siobhan Dowd

I'd also like to thank Luke's school library, who have promised to get him any of this list they have on their shelves. Librarians rock.

The 50 Books

Here are the books Luke will be reading. We've included links to Amazon in case you are interested in reading any of them with us, although there was one we could not find. We might make a couple of tweaks to the list but I'll explain about that in a minute:

1. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass - reviewed here
2. Pinocchio - reviewed here
3. Emil and the Detectives - reviewed here
4. Swallows and Amazons - reviewed here
5. Blackhearts at Battersea - reviewed here
6. The Owl Service - reviewed here
7. The Phantom Toll Booth - reviewed here
8. Moominsummer Madness - reviewed here
9. A Hundred Million Francs - reviewed here
10. The Castafiore Emerald - reviewed here
11. The Star of Kazan - reviewed here
12. A Christmas Carol - reviewed here
13. Just William - reviewed here
14. The Happy Prince - reviewed here
15. The Elephant's Child - reviewed here
16. Treasure Island - reviewed here
17. The Old Man and the Sea - reviewed here
18. The Man Who Planted Trees - reviewed here
19. The Singing Tree - reviewed here
20. The Secret Garden - reviewed here
21. Refugee Boy - reviewed here
22. Finn Family Moomintroll - replaced by this review (see notes below)
23. Diary of a Wimpy Kid - reviewed here
24. I Capture The Castle - Luke played a wild card, reviewed here
25. The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings - reviewed here
26. The Tygrine Cat - reviewed here
27. Carry On Jeeves - reviewed here
28. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - reviewed here
29. Moving Pictures - reviewed here
30. The Story of Tracy Beaker - reviewed here
31. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - reviewed here
32. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - reviewed here
33. Mistress Masham's Repose
34. Little Women
35. How To Be Topp - reviewed here
36. Stormbreaker - reviewed here
37. Private Peaceful - reviewed here
38. Artemis Fowl - reviewed here
39. The Silver Sword - reviewed here
40. Animal Farm
41. Skellig - reviewed here
42. Red Cherry Red - reviewed here
43. Talkin Turkeys - reviewed here
44. Greek Myths - reviewed here
45. People Might Hear You - reviewed here
46. Noughts and Crosses - reviewed here
47. Einstein's Underpants and How They Saved The World - reviewed here
48. After The First Death - reviewed here
49. The London Eye Mystery - reviewed here
50. Beano Annual - reviewed here

Those that chose the Moomin books both said any one of the series would do, so we think reading just one of them will satisfy the challenge. Luke's read a few of the titles on this list already himself (although he was faintly insulted by the inclusion of Diary Of A Wimpy Kid, which he thinks is for 9 year olds). As long as he can remember enough about them to do his review we'll tick them off his list. We don't think we'll bother with the version of Greek myths listed here and Luke has pretty much memorised them from the wonderful D'aulaire's Greek Myths so I think we've got that covered.

I'm relieved to see we own a fair few of the books already. Otherwise it might have become a rather expensive project as not all that many seem to be available at the library!

Personally, I think Little Women will present the biggest challenge for Luke in both style and content, but I look forward to seeing what he thinks of them all.

Where it all started

It started with Michael Gove.

That is not a sentence I thought I'd ever type, I must confess. However, he made a comment which inspired a newspaper article which inspired an email which inspired a conversation which inspired a bet which inspired this blog.

It seems Mr Gove thinks Y7 pupils should aim to read one book a week, 50 a year (maybe he thinks they should get Christmas holidays off? Or perhaps maths is not the Education Minister's strong suit) The Independent asked 5 authors and journalists for 10 books they'd recommend to Y7 students, making a list of 50 for the year.

My partner emailed me the list to show to our rather fabulous Y7 son Luke. He was unimpressed, "Did grown ups write this list? I think they did. Real 11 year olds would put stuff with more action and chases and adventure. Modern children want action." We had a chat about why classics were regarded as classics, that all old books were not necessarily ones that came out when I was a kid, some were even older than me and I still enjoyed them.

Upon hearing of Luke's disdain, his dad laughed and said, "Bet him a quid he can't read them all by Christmas."

I rather liked the idea, but knowing the pecuniary demands of today's 11 year old, bet him a tenner. "Will you provide the books? OK then, prepare to lose your money, Mum," said my supremely confident offspring.

Luke and I are blogging the bet - he'll be writing reviews of the books as he goes along and I'll probably get roped in as chief typist. I'm Jay, by the way. I'm a self employed baker (here's my website and here's the blog about my baking adventures) and mum to Luke, his younger brother and sister.

Welcome to our book journey!