Millions

Product Information

Yesterday a parent came over to tell me how impressed she was by the book fair and that you did a fabulous job of selling the books to the children first. It's mostly funny though sometimes sad, watching Damian struggle to be a good person while providing a nifty commentary about money, inflation, economy and investment (completely implausible, but still great!

Most of the novel was upbeat and cheerful because the boys were doing a lot of good deeds with all of their money and there weren’t that many major problems throughout the majority of the book. All I can tell from Frank Cottrell Boyce based on his jacket info is that he looks like Alan Cumming's brother and he has 7 kids. Millions is about two young brothers who come across millions of pounds and their decisions on what they do with it. The pair have big decisions to make, needing to reconcile their wildly different ideas about what to do with the cash.As an adult, I think I want to reread it so I can appreciate the simple adventure, because upon this (first ever) read I was wrapped up in Damian and in his r'ship with his father and brother and couldn't quite fully just enjoy the book, as it was so poignant. Millions is an interesting story about two young brothers who stumble upon a bag filled with thousands of pounds and must try and spend it before the currency is changed to the euro. Archived 8 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine Living Archive: Celebrating the Carnegie and Greenaway Winners. A fun story is Millions, with a lot of gentle and very British type humour that in particular my inner child has massively and totally enjoyed reading, but I certainly do wish, or rather my older adult self does wish that Frank Cottrell Boyce would make in particular his three main characters in Millions a bit more developed and nuanced, that Damian were less a goody-goody wanting to give all of the discovered Pounds Sterling to the poor, that his older brother Anthony would be just a trifle less mercenary, less spend-happy, less selfish, and that the father would not be depicted by Boyce as so massively clueless (and in many ways often functioning rather like a plot device, like a textual tool).

Damian, on the other hand, feels the “weight” of the money on his shoulders, and constantly looks for needy people and good causes whom he can help out. However, I personally found the sequencing of the invents a little confusing, with more and more problems rising in the plot where least expected. Even with all the fun and twists that transpire as one grand scheme leads to the next, Boyce also conveys the message that, indeed, money can be a burden. It seems that they’re at loggerheads over this too, with Damian convinced that the saints need thanking for their intervention in his life.This edition of Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s Carnegie Medal-winning Millions features fantastic cover artwork from the brilliant Steven Lenton. Being American, I wouldn't have been able to imagine the sound of the annoyed protagonist telling his older brother that his cardboard hideout isn't a den, but "an hermitage. Although I do think it would appeal to the more intelligent readers in the 10-13 age group, a lot of the humour and commentary is probably aimed more at an adult level of understanding. I was at my last school for 4 years and we had ********* book fairs every term – and every term, I was disappointed by the narrow range of books. Some bits seemed unclear and aspects could have been more explained, but overall it was an interesting read.

I haven't charted out my visits for the summer term, but I'm sure there are several in the south) and thanks so much for being so fantastic! Boyce’s book will certainly capture the interest of its target audience of upper school-age and middle-school readers. But how they would win, and what the answer was, I didn't know until the last, very satisfying, page. This book reads like a mad cap comic adventure/mystery/coming of age tale but is also a study in childhood grief and as is usual for this author the father son relationship is central to the plot . My least favorite part of the novel was when the boys’ do not accept Dorothy into their home to make dinner.Then a big bag of money falls off a train and as he and his brother struggle to spend it wisely and hide it from their Dad the book unfolds. Damian, who makes his hermitage by the train tracks, encounters a bag stuffed with millions and millions of pounds, about to be destroyed as Britain (in this book's universe) is about to convert its currency to the euro.

Then the next day when they come home from school they realize that crooks stole the rest of the money that was in the bag!The next day they try and find where the saints and the poor live, but before they can get to the house where the saints live they see a saint walking past them so they gave him some money from the bag. However I think that making the characters younger helped me to relate to them a little bit and I’m sure other people experience some of the situations that are touched upon in this book. I liked the theme of the story and I thought it told a very important lesson that everyone should learn, however I was indifferent about the book as a whole. The ceremony was met with worldwide acclaim and even included a section inspired by children's books. Other than that I think Millions was well written, and the characters were portrayed in different interesting lights.