Brimming with kindness, and voiced with humour by its adorable Charlton-obsessed protagonist, Adam Baron’s Some Sunny Day evokes all the fears and frustrations of pandemic lockdown from a child’s perspective. With a cast of gloriously authentic characters, it’s also a beautiful tribute to the work teachers did during the pandemic, and incredibly funny, with a mystery to boot.
Cymbeline Igloo (Cym) is well and truly fed up of being locked down. His mum is super-paranoid about COVID-19 and takes social distancing to the extreme. She’s also obsessed with keeping busy, which is why a massive clear out leads to her accidently giving away Cym’s beloved signed football shirt. A powerful subplot about the experience of refugees comes to the fore when Cym discovers who has his shirt.
Then, when COVID strikes close to home and his fellow Charlton-supporting neighbour Mrs Stebbings, the much-loved school cook, is taken into hospital, Cym realises what really matters, and rallies his class to pivot their WWII history assignment into a magical project to make her feel better.
Incredibly moving (reader, I cried), Some Sunny Day also brilliantly evokes the hilarious absurdities of lockdown, from taking daily exercise with a TV personality and baking sourdough bread, to supermarket shortages, and the triumph/despair of discovering/missing out on that last pack of toilet paper or bottle of ketchup.
A truly special story that will chime with thousands of young readers, this would also make a great book to read as a class.
You can watch our exclusive interview with author Adam Baron here.
A funny and incredibly moving new novel of our times by one of the most talented children's book authors working today, perfect for fans of Wonder, Frank Cottrell-Boyce or The Boy at the Back of the Class.
Cymbeline Igloo is BORED. Bored of home learning, bored of lockdown, bored of not being able to DO anything. And to make things even worse, his mum accidentally gave away his favourite football shirt. But then Mrs Stebbings, the beloved school cook, is taken into hospital, and suddenly coronavirus seems much closer to home. When Cym starts a project all about Mrs Stebbings' childhood in World War II, he can't know that it's the beginning of something incredible and even dangerous.
Exploring the place where her street once stood, he finds a tent, a strange girl wearing HIS SHIRT, and a mystery that will change absolutely everything. Because the past is more present than Cymbeline can possibly know - and the most amazing thing is how much one small person can do RIGHT NOW... Some Sunny Day is a story of hope, kindness and the history we all make every day, no matter who we are.
Adam Baron is the author of five successful novels and has, in his time, been an actor, comedian, journalist and press officer at Channel 4 television (as well as things he's too embarrassed to mention). He now runs the widely respected MA in Creative Writing at Kingston University London. Adam lives in Greenwich, South London, with his wife and three young children. He wrote Boy Underwater (his first novel aimed at younger readers) because they told him to. While still in the flush of youth he knows what his final words are going to be: `clear the table'.
“On a visit to the Lewes branch of Waterstones I got chatting to a bookseller who told me that she hadn’t seen a children’s book that was either set during the Covid 19 pandemic or dealt with its effects on our children. I was shocked by this and the idea for Some Sunny Day was instantly born.
My own children (I have three) were so clearly affected by home schooling, not seeing their friends, and the fear of a major disease, that I was able to draw closely on their experiences. A lot of these were funny - zoom calls went wrong, my wife witnessed toilet roll flash mobs in Asda, the handle of our frying pan came off during Clap For Carers. The pandemic also took its toll - a close friend lost her grandmother to Covid, while another was so debilitated by fear of catching Covid that it led to panic attacks, an author visit was particularly moving as they lost their head teacher to Covid.
It seemed so important to me that these experiences were reflected for young readers so that they could have this huge event acknowledged. I’ve never felt the need to do justice to a novel-idea so greatly as I did when writing Some Sunny Day. I knew that I had to fill the book with warmth and hope, but not shy away from some of the realities that our children had to face. The ending was the hardest thing to write. With my fabulous editor, we went through many drafts to show a young reader that they were emotionally supported through what happens. The book ends on a note of real optimism. It shows that, while no one would have chosen it to happen, the pandemic has left us with an increased sense of the redemptive power of friendship.”Adam Baron, 2022
