Song for a Tattered Flag

Another good value, high-quality offering from Walker Books and the vintage pen of Geoffrey Trease. Nick, visiting Bucharest with his youth orchestra, contacts a long-lost cousin and becomes involved in the events leading to the downfall of Nicolae Ceausescu. Trease communicates the tension and fear generated in ordinary people by Ceausescu's rule and, though his prose is occasionally rather old-fashioned, he recreates the people's revolution in an utterly believable way. Both sexes would enjoy this, since hero and heroine play equal parts. Book box collections from Year 9 upwards would benefit from the inclusion of such a fascinating and finely detailed novel.