Redhill School Grade 8

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time  is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down. AUTHOR: Mark Haddon

South African writer Williams (The Genuine Half-Moon Kid) delves deeply into the oppression, poverty, and xenophobia that plague so many nations in Africa in this gut-wrenching story of an outcast, soccer-loving teen from Zimbabwe. When 14-year-old Deo's village is ravaged by soldiers, he must flee with his older brother, Innocent, who suffered brain damage at birth, which has left him childlike and sometimes unmanageable. The obstacles the boys must overcome--traveling with no shoes and little money, confronting a hungry lion in a wild game reserve, and repeatedly withstanding prejudice and mistreatment as unwanted refugees--move the story along briskly, while its genuine and relatable characters keep it grounded. There is plenty of material to captivate readers: fast-paced soccer matches every bit as tough as the players; the determination of Deo and his fellow refugees to survive unthinkably harsh conditions; and raw depictions of violence ("The fear eats at us, burns us.... Nobody knows where the men with sticks and axes will be"). But it's the tender relationship between Deo and Innocent, along with some heartbreaking twists of fate, that will endure in readers' minds.   The book was reviewed under its American title: Now is the time for running.

The Hunger Games is a 2008 dystopian novel by the American writer Suzanne Collins. It is written in the voice of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in the future, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem in North America. The Capitol, a highly advanced metropolis, exercises political control over the rest of the nation. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. But Katniss has been close to death before - and survival, for her, is second nature. The Hunger Games is a searing novel set in a future with unsettling parallels to our present. Welcome to the deadliest reality TV show ever...