Name: mary's review of My Name is Mina by David Almond
Item: My Name is Mina
Rating: 4
Author: mary

David Almond

"There's an empty notebook lying on the table in the moonlight. It's been there for an age. I keep on saying that I'll write a journal. So I'll start right here, right now. I open the book and write the very first words: My name is Mina and I love the night. Then what shall I write? I can't just write that this happened then this happened then this happened to boring infinitum. I'll let my journal grow just like the mind does, just like a tree or a beast does, just like life does. Why should a book tell a tale in a dull straight line?" And so Mina writes and writes in her notebook, and through her stories, thoughts, lessons and dreams, Mina's journal and mind grow into something extraordinary. In this stunning book, David Almond revisits Mina before she has met Michael, before she has met Skellig, in what is a thought-provoking and extraordinary prequel to his best-selling debut novel, Skellig - winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Book Award. David Almond is also winner of the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen award.

My Name is Mina

Finya

mary

4.25⭐️
È un libro fantastico.Non ho mai letto skelling,in generale non ho mai letto alcun libro di Almond e devo dire che le mie aspettative erano davvero bassissime.E invece sono stata piacevolmente sorpresa.Bello bello bello.Infondo ognuno di noi è come Mina e vorrei tanto aiutarla.Merita tanto amore e soprattutto una persona che la comprenda.

Andrea Badgley

I read about this book on a writing blog - Live to Write, Write to Live (http://nhwn.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/...) - and picked it up after reading it described as "a slow and quiet story that hardly seems to be a story at all." That is a perfectly apt description of this book, and I wanted to read it because that is the type of writing that I do. To see a book not only published, but praised for this quietness, when this lack of story is what I always feel is my greatest weakness as a writer, was great encouragement to me.

I scowled at "My Name is Mina" during the first 50 pages or so, thinking it was simply a writer's indulgence for putting words on a page. For meandering and writing just for the sake of writing. But the more I got into it - there's no plot, really, just a girl, her pencil, her tree, and her "strangeness" - the more I understood and was encouraged by what Almond has done here. He made me think, and love, and empathize. He made me see the beauty in the shape of a poem about skylarks singing as they rise and as they fall. He made me slow down, and consider the world around me. He did what I want to do - he wrote a story that wasn't a story, but is a love for language, and for observation, and for stopping to think extraordinary thoughts.

stel

zaynah

Annelen Kröger

Zaynab Waqas

Tess 

Creative, intelligent, nine-year-old Mina keeps a journal in her own disorderly way that reveals how her mind is growing into something extraordinary, especially after she begins homeschooling under the direction of her widowed mother.

Carine

A prequel to the Carnegie Medal-winning Skellig finds the imaginative, night-loving Mina starting a journal in which she records her thoughts and discoveries about herself and the world.

Finya &
My Name is Mina by David Almond

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My Name is Mina by David Almond