Thornhill was not scary to me as an adult but it probably would be to the kids in age demographic it was written for. so, yeah - the story is rough, the artwork is uneven, but it's definitely not a waste of time. i just thought this was going to be one of those I LOVE YOU books, and it didn't work out that way.

I bought Thornhill after I saw it on one of my favourite booktube channels :) and the person who read it raved about it so I thought I would give it a go...and I was richly rewarded with an intriguing, atmospheric and very haunting read. Foster homes are a place for abandoned children. Jacqueline Wilson famously referred to them as The Dumping Grounds in the Tracy Beaker series. And for the children put into Thornhill this is very much the case. The house is probably normal to the outward eye, but to their perceptions it reflects the mood of the place. Their carers are not as attentive as they should be; they miss the signs of bullying and their eventual responses to it help to facilitate such behaviour further. All in all, they do everything that foster homes shouldn't do. Woe to Mary and Ella, victim and perpetrator of a situation that could have been so easily resolved had it been recognised by responsible eyes. Mary is a lonely orphan at the Thornhill Institute For Children at the very moment that it's shutting its doors. When her few friends are all adopted or re-homed and she’s left to face a volatile bully alone, her revenge will have a lasting effect on the bully, on Mary, and on Thornhill itself. Pam Smy has created a wonderful piece of work in 'Thornhill'. The drawings are full of atmosphere, the words are full of tension and emotion all the more powerful for being so sparingly revealed. This is in one sense a classic English lonely-child-and-garden story, in the tradition of Frances Hodgson Burnett and Philippa Pearce' Thornhill tells us two stories, one story we know solely by the words written into a diary; the other we read entirely in images; the two stories are set three decades apart and, pulled together through time by the threatening presence of a building; the stories touch at moments before colliding at the end. It is perfectly possible to read each story separately – which I did.; I read the book as one story first and then read it again as two stories.

I’ve been pondering about what to say about this book for days. It took me awhile to see how I felt about the book and I ended up reading it twice. I could feel myself frowning the entire way all the way to the end. Porque esta historia esconde una trama terrorífica que te pilla desprevenido. Todos alguna vez nos hemos sentido fuera de lugar, encerrados en un mundo en el que no encajamos, refugiados en nuestro lugar seguro. Todos construimos una barra de espinas a nuestro alrededor para alejarnos de un daño que acecha con una sonrisa. La protagonista de esta historia es uno de nosotros y eso la convierte en una fuente explosiva de emociones que corre el riesgo de destruir nuestras propias minas de defensa. Como he dicho, la edición es maravillosa pero lo veo más enfocado a un público juvenil. Tiene pocos personajes y la historia es muy fácil de seguir. Ella sneaks into the grounds of Thornhill and finds herself being watched in the distance by a young girl. But every time she tries to get closer, she disappears. She soon finds some dolls and puppets that she assumes must belong to whomever is haunting these grounds. She takes one of the puppets home and does some repairs on it to leave for the apparition on the grounds. I'm also all for how the book ends — it's the only way to wind it up without soft-pedaling and ruining all that had been established thus far — which was all that mattered to me for quite some time thereupon. I even contemplated rating this with five solid stars, but all things considered, this actually is a 4-star read personally.

Pam Smy is very good at world building. As a Senior Lecturer in Illustration at the Cambridge School of Art at Anglia Ruskin University, exploring that balance between character and place is something I expect she understands incredibly well. So when I state that Thornhill is a masterclass in narrative drawing, I feel I’m standing on solid ground. Mary and Ella, two young girls who live a stone’s throw away from each other yet thirty-five years apart, find themselves bound by unspoken parallels and an inescapable similitude of the heart. Part diary, part wordless illustration, this is an intelligent dual-narrative, gothic graphic novel whose characters and landscape burn tangibly with life. Years later, Ella moves to a new town where she has a perfect view of the dilapidated, abandoned Thornhill Institute. Determined to befriend the mysterious, evasive girl she sees there, Ella resolves to unravel Thornhill's history and uncover its secrets. And then comes Ella's turn. I really didn't see this coming but Ella also dies too :/ She finally gets into Thornhill and we see her with another figure who we suspect to be Mary but then lightning strikes and the house goes up in flames, consuming her. I can supply all publishers, for all subjects and these include SSP's Phonics, Library, Accelerated Reader, book banded books and whole class set text. Basically, any book or teaching resource with an ISBN . . .

LoveReading4Kids exists because books change lives, and buying books through LoveReading4Kids means you get to change the lives of future generations, with 25% of the cover price donated to schools in need. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives. Mary chooses to be silent. The bullying is relentless and nothing she can say to the adults who manage the Institute for Children in which she lives, would enable them to see the cruelty of the shining, smiling, golden girl who torments her. So she says nothing.

Her first novel,Thornhill was a critical and commercial success, shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's BookPrize, the UKLA Book Awards, and the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal 2018 and winning the 2018British Book Design & Production Award for Graphic Novels. She has delivered many talks andillustration workshops, including school events and major literary festivals. Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks. Home > Each Volume of the Book of Remembrance contains three months. Once an entry has been made it will always remain in the Book. For an entry in the October/November/December volume the application must be received by 5 th August the date the entry is to appear in the book (this doesn’t have to be the date of death but instead could be a birth date, or an anniversary);Hello Yellow - 80 Books to Help Children Nurture Good Mental Health and Support With Anxiety and Wellbeing - This personal touch is achieved by the individual being able to choose exactly how they want their entry to look. La historia está dividida en dos líneas temporales, por un lado el presente que se nos narra mediante las ilustraciones en tonos de gris, donde conoceremos a Ella, que se muda junto a su padre a una casa que colinda con Thornhill. Y el pasado en forma de diario y que transcurre en el año 1982, narrado por Mary Baines sobre lo ocurrido en ese antiguo orfanato para chicas llamado Thornhill.