I’ve been so busy working with my online creative writing programme that I simply haven’t had the time to write about all the books I’ve been reading. Two of them stand out, and one of those is Sarah Crossan’s Moonrise.
This is the fourth book that I’m reading by this wonderful writer, and it seems as if I can’t get enough of her work. I began with the one I enjoyed most of all – One. I went on to Apple and Rain, which I loved for completely different reasons. Apple’s poetry teacher, Mr Gaydon, is one of my favourite fictional teachers of all time! Toffee, somehow, was a little too sordid for me, so I didn’t review it on my blog. Yet, it left its mark. I can’t forget it.
And now, Moonrise.
With every beautiful verse novel I read, I realise how much I love this genre. The words are simple and sparse and for me, they create maximum impact because of this. A book like Moonrise needed to be written in verse because the emotions it touches are raw and best expressed without any descriptive fuss.
The narrator Joe hasn’t seen his brother Ed for ten years. And that’s because Ed is on Death Row. The date of the execution has been fixed and even though Joe has no money, no job and no place to stay, he knows he must leave home and spend time with Ed. He makes the journey, somehow. He finds an awful flat, reeking with the last tenant’s dishes, crawling with cockroaches. He’s there, close to his brother, yet he postpones seeing his brother because doubts creep in. Is Ed really the wonderful elder brother he knew ten years ago? And the tiniest, niggling question which he tries to push away, but must blurt out — is Ed really innocent, as he claims to be?
Children I meet during workshops and school visits often ask me a standard question – which was the first book that made you cry? I always tell them I can’t answer that one, but I can tell them which the last book that made me cry was. And now, it’s Moonrise.
| Title | Moonrise |
| Author | Sarah Crossan |
| Tags | Verse novel, Young Adult, Realistic Fiction |
| Age-group | 13+ |
| Rating (out of 5) | 5 |
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