Sunday, August 23, 2009

Pig City by Louis Sachar


Here is a book that is good from the very first word to the very last. I enjoyed this book so much I found myself reading it over breakfast then I would come to a part that was so shocking that I simply had to stop and take a break. A few hours later back I would come. Then I simply gobbled up the last fifty pages of this terrific book.

Pig City was first published as Sixth Grade secrets in 1987. I think we used to have this in our library but I had not read it perhaps because back then I didn’t know how much I loved the story telling of Louis Sachar.

In this book we have our central character Laura and her Year 6 classmates who are in the final stages of the year prior to High School. Laura starts an exclusive gang called Pig City and this is where the trouble really starts.

Mr Doyle, the long suffering class teacher, makes students copy dictionary pages as a punishment. By the end of the year Laura is certainly in deep trouble – she has to copy 16 pages!

This is a story about misunderstandings, rivalry jealousy, gangs and the ups and downs of school life but more than anything this is a story about friendship.

This book will certainly be one I remember for a long time. Students in Years 4, 5 and 6 will really enjoy this realistic, funny, sad, horrifying story about school life.

No comments: