Amy is in Year 6 and is looking forward to going to Valley High with her friends; however, when she discovers that her parents' house move means that she doesn't have a place, she is distraught. She hates her new home and now it means that she is going to be separated from her friends. And to make manners worse, she discovers that she needs to spend the beginning of the summer at her grandparents' house with her mum and her siblings. This means she is going to be miles away from her friends so she won't be able to go to the parties they are planning. For Amy, her life seems to be falling apart; just exactly how will she cope?
Amy, I feel, is a fairly typical eleven year old girl: she is desperate to be with her friends and doesn't want anything to come between that. She's moody although she doesn't always mean to be, and she is more concerned with her own needs than those of her family. Her world is literally turned upside down when she discovers that she has to go to Thornberry High and won't know anybody there. How could her parents do this to her? She feels this very personally and doesn't really see the true reason for their move (or chooses to gloss over it) which was due to her father's accident which left him unable to work for some time. As the summer holiday begins, she finds herself heading to her grandparents house whilst her father remains at home to refurbish the new house. With her two younger brothers and her mum, they will spending two weeks looking after her grandma who has injured her ankle and her grandfather (Pops) who is getting very forgetful - and what's even worse is that there is no WiFi and no mobile signal in the house - how will she survive?
Friendship is clearly at the forefront of Every Cloud and we see Amy's relationship with her best friends change over the course of the book and I think this will be good for children to read - friendships can change as we move through our lives and that's fine. I enjoyed the way her relationship with Jay developed - he's a lovely character and I think quite possibly my favourite in the book.
The subject of dementia is also a prominent theme in the book and is very well tackled. It is evident that Amy's Pops is in the early stages of dementia and we see him forget a variety of different things from what he's just said to who people are, and they ways in which the family need to accommodate to support him - Pops doesn't however, forget things that happened years ago so we get an insight into his younger days which leads to a really touching event towards the end of the book. Having watched my gran go through dementia, I found the way the subject was broached very sensitively and in a way that children will be able to understand.
I know that the choice of secondary school can be a tricky time for Year 6 children and a stressful one for parents; however, Every Cloud is the perfect book to show them that, no matter what happens, you will be ok.
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