My brother’s name is Jessica
‘My Brother’s Name is Jessica’ by John Boyne
I had no problem teaching my children to read pre-school or in nurturing their love of reading fiction. I was immensely proud of them, though I admit there was a large element of self-interest in encouraging them to early literacy. With a library at the end of our street, it was to prove a low cost and effective way of giving me a break from them, annoying little beasts that they were.
I quite liked reading the books written for their age groups before passing them on to one or other of them, as long as it was a good story that was well-written with believable characters and I didn’t have to constantly remind myself that whatever I was reading was written for youngsters, as I did with John Boyne’s latest offering. Although according to this interview, he claims not to write with a particular audience in mind, that just doesn’t ring true with this book which, of course, I only bought because people were calling for it to be boycotted. If there hadn’t been a fuss made about it, it wouldn’t have been on my radar and how depressing it is that the would-be censors of today have learned nothing from the past.
