Starboard - Nicola Skinner

I am a big fan of Bloom and Storm, so the thought of a third book from Nicola Skinner filled me with joy.  Then I was invited to review the book, which meant that I got my hands on an early copy and also got the opportunity to host Nicola, who has written a special piece for me about the SS Great Britain!  How lucky am I?!

So, here's my review, followed by Nicola's piece on the inspiration for Starboard.

Kirsten Brambles is an eleven year old pupil at Brimmerton Primary School in Bristol; she also happens to be the star of a popular reality TV show, where she is looking for true love for her adopted dad.  A school trip takes Kirsten and her class to visit the SS Great Britain, a once magnificent ship built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel; however, things don't go quite as Kirsten or her ex-best friend Olive had expected, and the pair find themselves thrown back together on the ship as it comes to life and sails out of dry dock and straight out to sea.  With the ship talking to Kirsten, mannequins coming to life and a map writing messages about where they are heading, it's up to the girls to discover why this is all happening.

Starboard is a book that will sweep you away from the very beginning with its imaginative and unusual plot.  From Bristol to the Falkland Islands via New York, this is a voyage with a difference as, along with Kirsten and Olive, the main characters are actually inanimate objects.  Having typed that, I actually feel quite bad using those words as you very quickly forget their status and see them as the living, breathing beings that they are.  By the end of the book, I felt that I really knew them as people and, in fact, can safely say that they stole the show!  Flatty is the most magical map (with just the right amount of attitude) and I have to give a nod to the captain's chair (is it wrong that I want to hug it?!)  But the real star (apologies to Kirsten!) is the ship herself, the SS Great Britain - majestic and wise but with so many hidden depths (and a few secrets), she'll make you dare to hope, she'll make you cry but, most of all, she'll make you fall in love with her. 

With a nod to the illustrations by Flavia Sorrentino, Starboard is a wonderful adventure of hope, friendship and finding yourself when you think you are lost at sea, and I'm sending thought telegrams to you all to tell you to go out and buy a copy, and a special thought telegram to Nicola to say thank-you for writing yet another brilliant book.

Now, find out exactly why Nicola was inspired to write about the SS Great Britain...

When I first clapped eyes on the most beautiful ship known to humanity (not hyperbole, FACT) and decided to write a children’s book about her, did I have any idea she’d be a perfect icon of survival for these troubled times?

No.

Yet was it inevitable she’d inspire me, every day, to keep going, given how clearly amazing she is?

Yes.

Can I stop asking myself theoretical questions and get to the point, given I only have a few hundred words for this post?

I can try.

When the SS Great Britain was designed in the mid 19^th century, Isambard Kingdom Brunel created her to be the most perfect ship of all time.

And she was – for a bit.

But the world doesn’t always know how to treat its superstars, and it didn’t take long for her to be mismanaged, grow shabbier. After serving her country for forty years, she was damaged in a storm and dragged to the Falkland Islands where – (wobbly lip) – she was not repaired. She was mutilated.

This is where I start to cry, look away now.

She was stripped of anything that might turn a profit – sails, wood, fittings – then dragged to a lonely cove, scuttled, and left to rot.

She did not rot.

She held on; wrecked, damaged, neglected – but she endured. Partly, I think, because she had been built and designed with so much love. It was impossible for her to fully collapse. But also because I think some mysterious power kept her intact; like the universe knew her time wasn’t quite up.

In 1967, a group of people came together and decided, with a fierce and admirable conviction, to join forces and bring her back to Bristol, the city where she had been built.  With funding from philanthropist Jack Hayward and the concerted efforts of salvage experts, her wreck was lifted from the sand and carefully taken the 8,000 miles back to the city of Bristol, her home.

Here she was restored entirely. Now she is as beautiful as the day she was launched – if not more so, because she looks like such a survivor.  

              I find it astonishing that a ship should make me feel so emotional but in 2021, her story is the one I cling to for hope. I think about her eighty years of decline out in the Falklands and the people who believed she deserved to be rescued, and how this belief spread, and made the impossible finally possible.

As we emerge, limping, from the strangest twelve months, it’s easy to feel wrecked and washed up too. Covid has crowbarred some pretty gaping holes into all our lives. But I am confident we can repair our world and what matters.  One day, we will be restored. The SS Great Britain did not break, and neither will we. 

Starboard is published in hardback on the 1st April.

My huge thanks go to Jessica Dean at Harper Collins for this opportunity.