Writes Of Passage : words to read before you turn 13 by Nicolette Jones

Writes of Passage: Words to read before you turn 13 by Nicolette Jones

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was pleasantly surprised by this collection because, if I’m honest, I expected something that might have read a little bit worthy. There’s always the risk of that with books like this because it can be a tiny little bit annoying to be told what you should read? And then there’s the risk of getting a book where the extracts are all from books by old white dudes or were all popular a hundred million years ago or all express Appropriate Sentiments For The Youth To Learn From…

Basically books like this are a minefield and yet I think that if you curate something well and recognise precisely where you are and what you’re playing with, you can produce something very nice indeed. That’s what Writes Of Passage is, that’s what Nicolette Jones does.

As ever with a Nosy Crow production, Writes Of Passage looks stunning and is beautifully put together. It’s split into several chapters on themes such as “becoming you and your future” and “childhood and your past” and gives you extracts involving books, speeches, poetry and songs from writers as wide-ranging like Charlotte Brontë, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Greta Thunberg. Every piece in the book comes with a thoughtful note from Jones where she discusses its resonance and why it was included in the book.

I think if you’re after an inspirational book that will grow with your young readers and offer them a lot of potential in taking ideas forward and carving out their own path, then this is an excellent choice. I also think there might be something very lovely in using this in a classroom / educational context for longer investigations and prompts for bigger pieces – it’s a “dipper” of a book, full of things to pull out and savour and dig deeply into. Like I said, it’s a nice piece of work, well done.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy.

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