Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
Why i decided to read this book...
I decided to read this book because i had read it before and wanted to reread it. it was a very good book and i really enjoyed it.
Category...
The category this book fits in to is a book that teaches you about another time in history and a book written by a NZ author. This book is set during the time of the NZ epidemics.
A character and/or setting...
A character i found interesting was Flo (the younger sister of the main character). She loves life, wants to be a singer, a dancer and to be famous. She dosen't like being inside she wants to be free.She was interesting to me as even thought she caught the epidemic and became paralysed, she was optimistic, she didn't let the fact that she couldn't walk anymore bring her down infact it made her want to recover faster. She was brave and kept her family from falling to pieces and helped her family survive.
What I learnt...
I learnt that, when life gives you lemons make lemonade. Don't let anything or anyone stop you from doing what you love or from being who you want to be.
A quote...
I quote I liked was "Running makes it all go away, all the bad things"- Tom (main character). I liked this quote because for me the quote has 2 meanings 1. Running makes Toms pain and suffering all go away 2. He is running away from his pain and all the bad things happening to him and his family.
I used to get this book out of the library all the time as a kid so reading it was good nostalgic vibes although it was very interesting to read about the polio epidemic in NZ and the contrast to covid now. With schools being shut down (they had to do school lessons in the newspapers) and quarantines and isolation etc, because the last time I read this book was well before 2020 it they all very foreign concepts.
It could be good for yr 9s looking to compare books about that experience and our experience now.
It could be good for yr 9s looking to compare books about that experience and our experience now.
I was always last in any running races at school (last in any sporting activity, to tell the truth, though I proudly told my grandchildren the other day that I won a race in the swimming pool once. It was a race called "The Last to Get From One Side of the Pool to the Other" - and you had to keep moving at all times, obviously. It's still one of my treasured memories from primary school). But our narrator of this story is fast. He loses the desire to race, though, when his sister contracts poliomyelitis in one of last century's epidemics.
This is an excellent story about friendship, family, and learning through life's often tough lessons. It brings in the famous NZ Olympic champion Jack Lovelock and sets the reader firmly in the historical period of the mid-1930s. A very good read!
This is an excellent story about friendship, family, and learning through life's often tough lessons. It brings in the famous NZ Olympic champion Jack Lovelock and sets the reader firmly in the historical period of the mid-1930s. A very good read!