We're delighted to announce Sally Green's debut YA novel Half Bad as one of our bookclub choice books for March. Sally was 48 years old when she penned her first novel which has gone on to be sold in 45 countries and film rights have already been snapped up.
Half Bad is the first in a trilogy which tells the story of a young male witch, Nathan, who is captured beaten and kept in a cage up until the age of fourteen because he doesn't fit into a society of black or white witches. Nathan must escape before his sixteenth birthday in order to fulfil his potential as a witch, or else he will die but he finds himself facing some great challenges, both emotional and political on his quest to discover who he really is.
Apply for a free copy and review or discuss the book on this thread. As a debut author, Sally has shared her Top tips for budding novelists.
Children's books
Children's bookclub: Half Bad by Sally Green - Apply for a free copy.
RachelMumsnet · 03/03/2014 15:02
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Well, I only received this yesterday as part of the giveaway and have finished it already.
A combination of ill me + ill child + lots of sofa time, but also the fact that I honestly didn't want to put it down.
I was intrigued from page one - gradually being given the details of Nathans circumstances in enough depth to really want to find out exactly WHY he was in that situation. And then the narrative looping back so that we did get the backstory.
I loved her writing style. It reminded me a little of something that Stephen King once said about the process of writing books (tried to find the quote, but gave up!) about how he basically used to re read what he had written and try and get rid of ANY extraneous words, of any padding. It feels like Sally Green has done this and very successfully, too. The writing is pared down - very simple, pure terms and also quite brutal at times (but also peppered with some lovely descriptive passages and imagery).
You get a good sense of the protagonist and gain a huge amount of sympathy for him, without necessarily feeling like you approve of some or all of his actions, in fact quite the opposite. I think that's quite a rare thing, really - so many main 'hero' characters in YA are 'misunderstood but moralistic/self deprecating and noble' blah blah, that it's quite refreshing to read something where the central character is quite amibiguous and you are NOT immediately certain of where the story will end up.
I thought it was great, as you can probably tell 
and I can't wait for the next one to come out (Spring 2015?!)
It's going to be a good one to hold onto for both DCs - I already have a few shelves of Pullman, Wynne-Jones, Susan Cooper etc waiting for them and this one can definitely join the ranks.
Many thanks for my copy :-)
Not trying to be funny here, but I'm wondering what the point of the questionnaire was as no-one that has responded on here so far seems to have children who are ready to read the book. 
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I can't remember a questionnaire soontobeslendergirl - did we complete one when we applied? I've got a ds who is 16 next month, which will be the perfect age for reading this. He's not getting it yet though as he's got Art GCSE coursework to complete, then a shedload of revision.
We had a discussion about this book on our Writing YA fiction course as Sally Green uses a second person point of view for the first 16 pages, which is really unusual and difficult to make work. I love this section. She does it brilliantly - IMHO the best bit of the book.
There's a clip on youtube where you hear about how the publisher from Penguin took on this book - it's at 2mins 30.
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