This is a warm, surprising, quirky, yet real and intelligent novel you
will fall in love with. It’s a coming of age tale of Frankie Parsons, a
twelve year old boy (who thinks and acts much older) who worries
incessantly about everyday life and the eccentric family around him.
His new friend - colourful, creative, talkative Sydney - has
relentless, unavoidable questions of her own that force Frankie and his
family to face up to things that have lain dormant for years. Kate De
Goldi has written a tender and endearing story that will break your
heart and make you laugh in almost equal measure and the final icing on
the cake - the quality of the writing is quite sublime.
It also has great crossover appeal to an adult audience plus it’s a great book for members of a family to enjoy together.
Frankie Parsons is twelve, going on old man. An apparently sensible,
talented boy with a drumbreat of worrying questions steadily gaining
volume in his head: Are the smoke alarm batteries flat? Does the cat,
and therefore the rest of the family have worms? Is the kidneyshaped
spot on his chest actually a golloping cancer?
Only Ma takes
seriously his catalogue of persistent anxieties; only Ma listens
patiently to his 10pm queries. But it is Ma who is the cause of the
most worrying question of all, the one that Frankie can never bring
himself to ask. Then the new girl arrives at school and had questions of her own: relentless, unavoidable questions. So begins the unravelling of Frankie's carefully controlled world.
Kate De Goldi lives in New Zealand. She has won a number of accolades
for her fiction, including the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award
and the Esther Glen Medal. Her book Clubs, illustrated by Jacqui
Colley, won Book of the Year in the New Zealand Post Children’s Book
Awards in 2005. The 10pm Question was a number one bestseller in New
Zealand, a White Ravens 2009 selection as an Outstanding New
International Book for Children and Young Adults, and the winner of the
2009 New Zealand Post Book Awards. In 2001, Kate was made a New Zealand
Arts Foundation Laureate.
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