My Own Personal Book Club

Have you ever seen the book section at the dollar store?
I’m not talking about the board books area, but that random two foot section of even more random books… next to all the New Testaments.
Yeah, you’ve passed it.
Have you ever actually looked at it?
Check it out next time you are picking up bleach.
I love reading and I don’t care if it’s a current best seller or a best seller from 15 years ago! And that’s what you’ll find in this random mix. Older books. And I mean, who cares if you don’t like it. It’s a dollar… use it for kindling at your next beach bonfire if you get bored after the first 30 pages.

The last book I picked up was Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin. It was a Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year in 2000. I love historical fiction so I picked it up and it was a good read.

The book takes place in eighteenth century England and centers around ‘the Coram man’. Peddlers in different areas would collect abandoned children and deliver them to the Coram Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Children. A charity that still exists today! In this area the ‘Coram Man’ was Otis and his assistant was a boy named Meshak. Instead of delivering the collected children, Otis would kill them and collect the money every year from the families to “take care of the child” or to blackmail rich women who wanted their out-of-wedlock-pregnancies hidden.
I know, huge bummer right!?!?
This story centers around the complicated relationship between Otis and Meshak, then how Meshak ends up escaping and saving a child, Aaron, from Otis. Then the story continues with the Aaron’s story!
It’s good, and because it teen novel, the story doesn’t end depressing.