Screw Loose

Review also includes:

Screw Loose 4u2read.ok, Alison Prince, 64pp, 978-1842990711

Friday Forever, Annie Dalton, ill. Brett Hudson, 96pp, 978-1842990049

Friday Forever 4u2read.ok, Annie Dalton, ill. Brett Hudson, 92pp, 978-1842990704

Barrington Stoke publish books for reluctant readers: children who have a specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia, or who have fallen behind in reading because English isn’t their first language, who lack confidence, are bored at school or have attention problems. Screw Loose and Friday Forever are both for children who are aged between 8 and 13 but who have the reading ability of an 8-year-old.

Maintaining the interest of reluctant readers calls for action-packed stories and these are certainly that. Both stories hinge on an inexplicable and uncanny event: Prince’s hero Roddy spends the first half of the book literally causing the school to fall apart with the help of a screwdriver he’s found but is suddenly and mysteriously appointed headmaster with the task of putting the school back together – metaphorically this time. Meanwhile Dalton’s Lenny has a ‘Groundhog Day’ experience and is forced to relive one miserable Friday over and over again until he finds a way to change it.

Both books prove that writing short and accessible doesn’t need to mean writing down: each boy is on the outside and the stories, in their different ways, look at why it’s important to find a place comfortable for you inside society.

The 4u2read.ok editions of these books are specially adapted versions of the story for children aged 8–13 but with a reading age below 8; the texts have been simplified and some vocabulary changed, there’s more direct speech and speech bubbles are used to make absolutely clear what a character is thinking. Cleverly, the books look almost identical to the original editions so that they can be used in a mixed ability class with no-one the wiser.

Interestingly, while Prince’s is the most sophisticated – more is left to the reader to work out and Roddy’s transformation into head requires some reading between the lines – it works the better of the two in the 4u2read.ok format. Even with the abbreviated text, we still understand just how Roddy thinks and how he comes to work out what school is for. Dalton’s book hangs on its demonstration of cause and effect and at times, to make the book fit the new format, some of the causes have been removed. It suffers a little as a result and some of the depth has gone.

All four books however are still gripping, accessible and will be thoroughly enjoyable to their intended readers and others.