Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman

This one is a bit of a cheat, as I haven’t read it recently. It was in fact the first book I read at Fernhill. But it has to be included as it’s a must-read.

This is perhaps one the first children’s books to shock me into realizing just how lucky we are to live the life we do and not be subjected to things that others in this world are and have been in the past. It is a story which leaves the reader shocked; a story of race inequality, of teenage love, family life and its problems, a story with a deeply disturbing ending. You’ve been warned!

Sephy and Callum have been best friends since childhood, and now they are older, they realise they want more from each other. But the harsh realities of lives lived in a segregated society are beginning to take their toll: Callum is a nought-a second-class citizen in a world dominated by the Crosses-and Sephy is a Cross, and the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the country. The barriers they would have to cross to be together at first seem little more than minor obstacles to the two idealistic teenagers, but soon those barriers threaten not only their friendship but their lives.

This book holds a message; about the past, present and the future. Blackman has cleverly turned the preconceived ideas of racial prejudice around, to make the white people, the noughts of society.

Well worth a read, and afterwards why not try ‘Checkmate’ and ‘Knife Edge’ too, the second and third books in the trilogy.

Miss Robinson