Paul May on 'The Ghost Drum'
Paul May is an allotmenteering writer for children, who lives in London. He has written non-fiction about cars, dinosaurs and astronauts among other things: and fiction about football, people being scared and many other subjects.
A while ago now, he set himself the task of reading and reviewing every book that has won the Carnegie medal since it began.
Inevitably, this led to him reading and reviewing 'The Ghost Drum.' I link to his review below.
You can find more of these reviews, and more about Paul May and his books on his website, here.
Monday, 6 February 2023
The Ghost Drum - Susan Price's Carnegie Winner by Paul May
It's almost 20 years since my wife, Ellie, died of breast cancer, but before she died she contributed to a book edited by Tania Yelland called All Woman: A Life after Breast Cancer. Tania Yelland* also died several years ago, so there's a kind of grim irony about the book's title, but it's not in any way a grim book. Rather, it's a collection of pieces of writing by thirty quite different women about how they coped with their illness and its aftermath.
One of the things the contributors were asked to do, in addition to having their photo taken by Arthur Edwards who at that time specialised in taking photos of royalty for The Sun newspaper, was to choose a helpful quote for the start of the piece. Ellie almost chose this, which we'd seen at the start of Kevin Crossley-Holland's The Norse Myths.
'Fearlessness is better than faint-heart for any man who puts his nose out of doors.'
(Anonymous lines from For Scirnis)
Readers of Susan Price's 1987 Carnegie winner, The Ghost Drum, will know at once why I mention this...