 First edition | |
| Author | Elaine Forrestal |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Published | 1996 (Puffin Books) |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 162 |
| ISBN | 9780140380927 |
| OCLC | 988921332 |
Someone Like Me is a 1996 children's novel by Australian author Elaine Forrestal. It is about a boy 'Tas', who becomes friends with his neighbour, a girl called Enya.
The main protagonist is Thomas Alexander St. John "Tas" Kennedy, a preteen boy. He lives on a farm in Australia with his parents and two sisters, and his dog, Reebok. He is also frequently subject to being transferred to a special school.
A Northern Irish girl called Enya Dunleavy moves in next door to Tas, and they quickly become friends. However, when they find a box full of explosives near their house, Enya is scared for reasons unknown to Tas.
One day, Tas tries to play a prank on the school bully, Darren "Dreadlock", but his teacher, Mr. McKinlay "Mac", takes the bait and faints, causing everyone to be sent home early. As Enya was absent, Tas goes to her house and notices her parents in an argument with another man, which ends with Tas being shot.
Tas is sent to the hospital, where he is nearly choked to death by Enya's uncle, Seamus, for spying on their argument, but is saved by Mr. Mac. The two of them spend weeks in the hospital together before returning to school. After a run-in with Dreadlock and his cronies, Tas meets up with Enya, who reveals that she was the one who shot Tas and that it was an accident.
After a good performance at a play of Peter and the Wolf , Tas is invited to audition for admittance to a music school. After the audition, he returns home to find Reebok dying after having eaten snail pellets. Seamus is later arrested for stockpiling ammonium nitrate, as well as his attempted murder of Tas. As a result, Enya's family becomes more accepting of visitors.
Tas is later awarded a scholarship to the music school. It is here that he reveals that he is blind.
Someone Like Me won the West Australian Young Readers' Book Award in the Hoffman Award category in 1998. [1] Someone Like Me won the 1998 Children's Book Council of Australia's Children's Book of the Year Award: Younger Readers award. A review in Bookbird noted the themes of school bullying, family relationships and violence in Ireland in Someone Like Me. [2] Forrestal's "believable characters" have been praised, as well as the growing air of "menace" that mounts in Someone Like Me. [3] In 2007, the book was used as stimulus for a two to four-week program of curriculum activities on violence in connection with the National Day of Reading, a joint initiative of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE) and the Australian Literacy Educators' Association (ALEA). [4] Material relating to the publication of Someone Like Me, including draft manuscripts, newspaper clippings and reader correspondence is held in a collection of Elaine Forrestal's manuscripts by the State Library of Western Australia. [5]
The Graduate is a 1967 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Mike Nichols and written by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham, based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Charles Webb, who wrote it shortly after graduating from Williams College. The film tells the story of 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock, a recent college graduate with no well-defined aim in life, who is seduced by an older married woman, Mrs. Robinson, but then falls for her daughter Elaine.
Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor. As one of the key actors in the formation of New Hollywood, Hoffman is known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and emotionally vulnerable characters. He is the recipient of numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards. Hoffman has received numerous honors including the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1997, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1999, and the Kennedy Center Honors Award in 2012. Actor Robert De Niro described him as "an actor with the everyman's face who embodied the heartbreakingly human".
Paul Jennings AM, is an English-born Australian writer for children, young adults and adults. He is best known for his short stories that lead the reader through an unusual series of events and end with a twist. Many of his stories were adapted for the cult classic children's television series Round the Twist. Jennings collaborated with Morris Gleitzman on the book series Wicked!, which was adapted into an animated TV series in 2000, and Deadly!.
Maniac Magee is a novel written by American author Jerry Spinelli and published in 1990. Exploring themes of racism and inequality, it follows the story of an orphan boy looking for a home in the fictional town of Two Mills. Two Mills is harshly segregated between the East and West, blacks and whites. He becomes a local legend for feats of athleticism and helpfulness, and his ignorance of sharp racial boundaries in the town. It is popular in middle school curricula, and has been used in social studies on the premises of reaction to racial identity and reading. A TV movie was released on February 23, 2003.
Paul Collins is an Australian writer and editor who specializes in science fiction and fantasy.
Ten Things I Hate About Me is a 2006 young adult novel by Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah. The book was first released in Australia on October 1, 2006, through Pan MacMillan Australia. Ten Things I Hate About Me was awarded the 2008 Kathleen Mitchell Award for Excellence in Young Adult Writing and was shortlisted for the 2008 Redbridge Book Award.
Double Act is a children's novel by Jacqueline Wilson, written in the style of a diary, which features identical twins Ruby and Garnet. Ruby and Garnet love each other dearly but they are completely different. Ruby is loud, outgoing and wild though Garnet is shy, quiet and kind. It was published in 1995, co-illustrated by Sue Heap and Nick Sharratt, and it won both the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize and the Red House Children's Book Award.
Touch Me (ISBN 0702231517) is a novel written by Australian author James Moloney. It was published in April 2000 by University of Queensland Press. The National Library of Australia holds eleven editions of this title including as a book, braille, sound recording, MP3 and electronic resource. It is also included in the Kerry White collection of Australian children's books.
Don't Call Me Ishmael is a young adult novel by Australian author Michael Gerard Bauer. It is about Ishmael Leseur, a 15-year-old boy, and his experiences in Year Nine of school. It won the 2008 award for children's literature at Writers' Week, Australia's oldest writers' festival. It was short-listed for the Children's Book Council of Australia's Book of the Year award in the older reader category in 2007. In April 2018, Don't Call Me Ishmael: The Musical by Fin Nicol-Taylor and Christopher Thomson, was premiered in Brisbane.
Space Demons is a young adult novel written by Gillian Rubinstein, first published in 1986. It details the story of five children playing a video game which both affects and is affected by their real lives. It is the first of a trilogy, followed by Skymaze (1989) and Shinkei (1996). It was adapted as a play by Richard Tullough in 1990.
Phillipena Noël, best known by the name Ena Noël, was an inspirational school teacher and advocate for children's literature and library services to children and young adults. Ena Noël's name is synonymous in Australia with children's literature and with IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People.
Robin Morrow AM is an Australian lecturer, critic and editor in children's literature. She is a past president of the Australian section of the International Board on Books for Young People IBBY Australia.
Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature is the official refereed journal of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). It is published quarterly and distributed by Johns Hopkins University Press.
The Bluford Series is a widely read collection of contemporary American young adult novels set in the fictional inner-city high school of Bluford High in Southern California. Bluford is named for Guion "Guy" Bluford, the first African-American astronaut. The series was created and published by Townsend Press and was co-distributed by Scholastic. As part of an effort to promote reading in underfunded school districts, Townsend Press originally made the Bluford Series available to schools for a dollar each. As of 2018, over 11 million Bluford Series novels were in print.
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life is a realistic fiction novel by James Patterson that serves as the beginning of Patterson's Middle School series. Published in the United States by Little, Brown and Company on June 27, 2011, the book follows sixth grader Rafe Khatchadorian as he begins middle school and "copes with the awkwardness of adolescence: crushes, bullying, family issues" as he attempts to break every school rule in the code of conduct. The book received critical acclaim from many reviewers and went on to spawn a sequel, Middle School: Get Me Out of Here!.
Wonder is a children's novel written by R. J. Palacio, published on 14 February 2012. Wonder was inspired by an incident where her son started to cry after noticing a girl with a severe facial deformity. Fearing her son would react badly, Palacio attempted to remove him from the situation so as not to upset the girl and her family but ended up worsening the situation. Natalie Merchant's song of the same name made her realize that the incident could illustrate a valuable lesson. Palacio was inspired by Merchant's lyrics and she began writing. She named the book directly after the song and used the song's chorus as the prologue of the first chapter.
The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen is a young adult novel by Canadian author Susin Nielsen, first published in 2012. It deals with the effects of a school shooting on the shooter's family.
Melissa, previously published as George until April 2022, is a children's novel about a young transgender girl written by American author Alex Gino. The novel tells the story of Melissa, a fourth-grade girl who is struggling to be herself to the rest of the world. The rest of the world sees Melissa as George, a boy. Melissa uses the class play, Charlotte's Web, to show her mom that she is a girl by switching roles with her best friend, and playing the part of Charlotte. Scholastic first published the novel on August 25, 2015, and it has had a mixed reaction because of its LGBT+ content. In 2021, Gino retitled the novel Melissa.
René Saldaña Jr. is an American poet, novelist and educator. Currently, he is an associate professor of language and literature in the College of Education at Texas Tech University. He is also the author of several books for young readers, best known for The Jumping Tree and The Whole Sky Full of Stars. His publications have received many positive reviews and recognition from several literary circles.
Elaine Forrestal is a Western Australian writer of books for children and young adults, including her 1996 book, Someone Like Me.