Just In Case Meg Rosoff Lovereading - -Year 8 (age 12-13) More books from this list Book 20 of 32. View the next book in this list View the next book in this list This title is in stock Price £5.24 RRP £6.99  Saving £1.75 (%25)   Download Extract    Buy This Book

The Lovereading comment:

Winner of the Carnegie Award 2007 and Winner of the Costa Children's book award.

A razor-sharp portrait of a teenage boy and his relationship with his image, his inner life and fate itself.  Shortlisted for the prestigious Carnegie to be announced on 21 June, Just in Case was also shortlisted earlier this year for the Costa Children’s Book of the Year.  A faultless narrative that combined with an original storyline makes it incredibly special. (12+)

Judges' comment:

A story that deals with anxiety, depression and coming of age that has real emotional resonance.  This is a distinctive and outstanding book written in an intelligent, yet spare style. There is an ‘edginess’ to the way the author writes;  the result is clever and bold.  The character of the teenage boy is conveyed in an interesting way and is not at all stereotypical.  This is a story of survival in the modern world that is utterly compelling.

About The Author

Meg Rosoff was born in Boston, USA. She has worked in publishing, public relations and most recently advertising, but thinks the best job in the world would be head gardener for Regents Park. Meg lives in Highbury, North London.

How I Live Now was Meg Rosoff's debut novel published by Penguin in 2004. It won the Guardian and Branford Boase Awards and was short-listed for the Orange Prize for New Fiction as well as the Whitbread. It garnered the sort of rave acclaim most writers only ever dream of. Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, championed it right from the beginning, saying, 'That rare, rare thing, a first novel with a sustained, magical and utterly faultless voice. After five pages I knew that she could persuade me to believe almost anything.'

Meg wrote How I Live Now soon after her younger sister Debby died of breast cancer. Meg realised that life was too short to put off writing the novel she'd always been meaning to write. She took leave from her advertising job at J Walter Thompson and set about writing How I Live Now. A few months later Meg found herself at the heart of a bidding war between several of the UK's leading publishers. How I Live Now is dedicated to her late sister Debby.

On the verge of publishing glory in August 2004, Meg was also diagnosed with breast cancer. As wonderful reviews and prizes flooded in, she had to turn to the business of survival but has since been given the all clear.

Since How I Live Now, Meg has gone on to write several award-winning books including Just in Case, which won the coveted and most prestigious children's book prize, the Carnegie Medal in 2007, and What I Was, set in Suffolk where Meg has a second home. Her Hardyesque nineteenth century novel The Bride's Farewell was published in 2009 and her highly anticipated new novel There Is No Dog based on the idea of God being a feckless teenage boy is published in August 2011.