LoveReading4Kids Says
Winner of the Yoto Carnegie Medal 2022 | Shortlisted for the UKLA Book Award 2022 ages 7-10
Raw, lingering and stirringly lyrical, October, October had me hooked from opening to end.
Conjured in language that crackles and smoulders like an autumn bonfire, this is a book of bones and bark, of frost and flame, captivating in the manner of Skellig or Stig of the Dump as it undulates towards a wondrous homecoming of the heart.
“We live in the woods and we are wild… Just us. A pocket of people in a pocket of the world that’s small as a marble. We are tiny and we are everything and we are wild.” October has everything she wants living in the woods in the house her father built. Her mother left when October was four and she’s adamant that, “I don’t want her. She’s not wild like we are.”
This year October’s euphoria at the onset of autumn is sullied when she discovers a dead owl and a motherless baby owl: “my heart won’t stop bruising my ribs.” So, she rescues the baby, names it Stig and declares it her first ever friend. Calamity strikes when the woman “who calls herself my mother” arrives as a birthday surprise - her beloved dad breaks his spine after falling from a tree and October must stay with this woman – her mother – in London while he recuperates. In the chaotic city, October is a bird with clipped wings. Torn from her wild world, she implodes, becomes a “firework of fury”, until she strikes up a bond with a boy named Yusef and discovers mudlarking, which makes her once more “a wild animal skulking and prowling for food”, “a pirate hunting for treasure.”
An unforgettable story, an unforgettable heroine – it’s no exaggeration to hail this a future classic.
Joanne Owen
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Katya Balen Press Reviews
Katya Balen's October, October is a very special new addition to the shelf and deserves classic status - Times Children's Book of the Week
Quite simply one of the most beautiful books I've ever read - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
October, October is fierce with a wild love. It draws you in to its heart, shakes you with a fury, wraps you in a spell of storytelling. In lyrical prose, Katya Balen gives us a modern day heroine filled with courage. I loved every page. - Jackie Morris
In October, October the greenwood meets the city. Wise and bright - I loved it. - Hilary McKay, author of The Skylarks' War
It's EXQUISITE. Read it. Wild yourself. Open your heart to it. Written with the pen of a poet and the soul of Mother Earth. Glorious. It's like nothing else I've ever read. - Liz Hyder, award-winning author of Bearmouth
A modern classic ... relevant, comforting and life-affirming - Scotsman
This book feels like a secret treasure found in the woods ... earthy and magic and beautiful. I want to buy a copy for everyone I know. - Sophie Kirtley
One of the most beautiful children's books I've ever read - Natasha Farrant
The world is not a simple place, and Balen draws a touching, spikey, sparky, dangerous, heartful portrait of a girl slowly learning that. - A.F. Harrold
This is what language can do - tell a story that burns with intense, furious passion, and yet be so disciplined that one never doubts, not for one moment, the emotional truths driving it. This song of the wild and of our most profound human longings is deeply moving, deeply satisfying, and it's my children's book of the year. - Kevin Crossley-Holland
One of my favourite books this year. Beautiful and uplifting, a powerful evocation of nature and wildness that I found both surprising and incredibly moving. Tears were shed! -- Jo Boyles - The Rocketship Bookshop
The perfect Autumn read - you can almost smell the damp leaves, crisp air and smoke from a distant bonfire ... It would be an ideal book to read alongside forest school sessions. - Primary Teacher Bookshelf
A timeless, lyrical treasure that sees a girl who's at one with the wild struggle with the world beyond her woods ... An unforgettable story, an unforgettable heroine - LoveReading4Kids
Balen's immensely touching, well-written story about the pleasures and perils of wildness combines a lush, autumnal sensibility with a perceptive story about a transitional phase in a young girl's life. - Booktrust
This is a sensitive account of adjusting to change and the grief that comes with it - CBI Mind Yourself 2020 Reading Guide
This is the beautifully told second novel of a remarkable new writer - Best children's books of the year 2020, The Times {Saturday Review}
I've also just been introduced to the first two stunning children's books by Katya Balen, both published by Bloomsbury: The Space We're In and October, October. If you have a middle-grader, or know one, or are one ... treat yourself -- Daniel Hahn - Books of the Year, The Spectator
The theme of raising a wild bird is at the heart of Katya Balen's October, October ... Only it's about more than that: about the gap between life in the wild woods and in London, where October is saved by mudlarking, and friendship with a boy called Yusuf - Animal magic: children's books for Christmas, The Spectator
Written in beautiful prose, it is a heartbreakingly tender story of growing up, childhood, finding your own space, learning to forgive and ultimately celebrating what it is in the human spirit that gives hope to us all - Dandelion
As soon as I had finished it, I wanted to go right back to the beginning and read it all over again - CLPE Staff Picks 2020
October, October is one of those books which, as soon as I had finished it, I wanted to go right back to the beginning and read it all over again - Katie, CLPE Staff Picks 2020
An incredible story about love, loss, hope and overcoming adversity - The Green Parent
On winning the Carnegie Medal, Katya said ;
“I am so thrilled to have won the Yoto Carnegie Medal, not only because it’s the award every children’s writer dreams about, but because it is so committed to promoting reading and sharing stories. Sharing stories is something I believe to be one of the most important parts of our lives, simply because stories are our lives. They are threads that connect us all. They make us understand, they give us a shared experience, and they give us something special and private too. They give us wild freedom and they give us safety and comfort. “In my book, October is saved by stories. She is isolated, unusual, angry, friendless, lost, displaced, wild. But through stories she is able to connect to the world around her, and to the people around her. Stories make her who she is, but they also help her to see who other people are too. Stories make her a part of a new world, and keep her old life alive. They connect everything and everyone, and that’s what is so magical about stories. They build us, they anchor us, they let us be wild. They are everything.”
Find out more about the Yoto Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medal 2022
