LoveReading4Kids Says
LoveReading4Kids Says
August 2022 Book of the Month
It’s 1940, the beginning of summer, and we’re in the Lake District. Tommy lives with his aunts, helping on their farm, his father is missing in action. The only person who can make him smile is Sally, an evacuee from Tyneside living with sour old Farmer Scarcross who is their nearest neighbour. Sally it is who discovers the German airman, caught by his parachute on a tree but very much alive. Contrary to what Tommy thinks, she decides they must hide him – and Sally, tough, resourceful, sharp as nails, knows how to fight to get her way.
With vicious Scarcross out to track the airman down, backed up by his Home Guard cronies, the decision becomes increasingly dangerous. Scarcross isn’t the only bully amongst their neighbours, and Sally is as much the hunted as the man she’s so determined to protect.
It’s a story that allows readers to jump feet first into adventure. Tommy and Sally are wonderful characters, the latter in particular, and their exploits are steeped in atmosphere.
The depiction of the Cumbrian countryside is superb too, the cuckoo’s call marking time as the months pass and secrets are shared and revealed. The ending is everything readers will want, full of drama, excitement and a sense of rightness. There are echoes of that great storyteller Robert Westall, of Machine Gunners fame, but the story brings Goodnight Mister Tom to mind too – high praise, and thoroughly deserved.
Andrea Reece
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About
Cuckoo Summer Synopsis
Summer 1940. As the cuckoo sings out across the Lake District, life is about to change for ever for local boy Tommy and his friend Sally, the mysterious evacuee girl who lives on the neighbouring farm. When they find a wounded Nazi airman in the woods, Sally persuades Tommy not to report it but to keep the German hidden.
This starts a chain of events that leads to the uncovering of secrets about Sally's past and a summer of adventure that neither child will ever forget.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781839132094 |
| Publication date: |
7th July 2022 |
| Author: |
Jonathan Tulloch |
| Publisher: |
Andersen Press Ltd |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
256 pages |
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Press Reviews
Jonathan Tulloch Press Reviews
'A ripping wartime adventure and a love letter to Lakeland's farms and fells' - Melissa Harrison
'With a brilliant cast of characters, dialogue to die for and a tone reminiscent of Robert Westall at his finest, I was hooked from the very first page' - Phil Earle
'Beautifully written... A moving story about identity and finding your family for fans of Carrie's War and Goodnight Mister Tom' - The Bookseller
'an exciting and lively story... It is great fun' - Books for Keeps
Author
About Jonathan Tulloch
Author of eight novels, including The Season Ticket, Give Us This Day and Mr McCool, Jonathan's work has been filmed, staged and Radio 4 serialised. He has won the Betty Trask Prize and the JB Priestley Award. He writes The Times' Nature Notebook, and a nature column in The Tablet.
More About Jonathan Tulloch
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A message from the author, Jonathan Tulloch;
This book is as old as I am. Even older. For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard stories about the Lakeland farm where my mam spent the war with her aunties: the hill where she waited for my granddad to come back from the Normandy landings, the evacuees who arrived not knowing how to use a knife and fork, the cuckoo that never shut up, the bomber that crashed, the parachute over the farmhouse, the German airman that everyone said must be hiding in the woods…
Now at last, after many, many attempts, I’ve built all the parts into a book – I first began it 25 years ago. Novels are made up, but stories are always real. And Cuckoo Summer feels as real as the soft Lakeland rain.
I’m very lucky. Since I stopped teaching, I’ve been a professional author. Increasingly my day job has been to write nature columns – surely the best job in the world! And so, all the glorious sights and sounds of British nature have flown and grown their way into these pages. Not just the cuckoo that called over the wartime tarn, but all the different species of trees, birds and flowers that I can remember being common in my own childhood. I think we need to meet nature in our books so we know what the British countryside should really sound, smell and look like. As well as being an important story, Cuckoo Summer is an ideal landscape for me; it’s a farm, it’s a community and it’s full of meadows and fells.
I’m pretty sure that this is the only children’s novel that mentions the hidden treasure of betony, lady’s bedstraw and hare’s-foot clover. But I’d love to be proved wrong! Writing this book has also given me the excuse to use my favourite word over and over – tarn.
Birdsong fills these pages, and I’ve also let the book ring with the music of Geordie and Cumbrian dialects. For me the way people speak is as beautiful and natural as bees and butterflies.
