Synopsis:
George is announced during school assembly. He’s a brand new boy. Daniel is charged with looking after George, and although he notices certain things about George straight away, Daniel reckons George is great. After all, he can kick a football for miles.
The truth about George is slowly revealed and Daniel has lots of questions. Did George’s ear really fall off? And why is George followed by sinister Miss Crystal who cares so much about making him an ‘ordinary boy’. Why is George bundled into a black van at the end of the day?
Can ordinary Daniel and his friends help George escape his minders?
Review:
David Almond returns to themes of creativity and what it means to be human in his latest novel.
Brand New Boy is set in a school filled with creative activity. Children sing and play instruments in assembly, and write stories in class, and use their imagination in science to learn about the solar system. Imagination, after all, is how we come to understand new things. George, by contrast, is programmed with exam-like facts, but he can’t begin to think outside of his very limited experience. His minders like him that way. They are keen to pass him off as a child, and take delight in his intelligence.
Daniel grows concerned about George. There’s a whole list of foods George isn’t allowed to eat, and there are places he can’t go, and Miss Crystal even objects when George enjoys things like stroking a cat. Compared to George’s ability to recite facts, Daniel feels quite ordinary. Perhaps ordinary people are filled with an extraordinary capacity to learn through play? Marta Altés’s illustrations pick up on this theme too, with beautiful, child-like drawings of woods and the children all filled with life except for shining-eyed, robot-like George.
It is difficult not to spot links to current attitudes about education. Current grammar tests in primary schools, for example, are filled with terms most older people have never come across. Almond has written around this theme before, but Brand New Boy is squarely in support of schools and teachers. It is strange Miss Crystal, from an outside organisation, who is so concerned with what children should know that her beliefs stops George from developing an imagination. What makes her character particularly sinister is her apparent certainty that she is doing something wonderful for George. Miss Crystal is the kind of person who can’t see past her own ideology to the harm she is doing others.
Black vans and Miss Crystal aside, the story is filled with the joy in the everyday and thirst for life that has become Almond’s signature. Singing, joke-telling, and long childhood days in the woods. We can all learn from Daniel and his friends, and from this beautiful story.
- Brand New Boy by David Almond, illustrated by Marta Altés, is available now. A copy of the book was provided as part of this promotional blog tour.
