This book is a tale of two Bullens, a 13-year-old Bullen and a 26-year-old one. At 13, I hated this book when we did it at school. I remember loathing it and, having re-read it, I suspect I never even finished it, despite having to complete quite a bit of work on it. At 26, I found it in the school book cupboard and decided to re-read it because there's enough there for one class to do it and money's too tight to mention.
Thirteen years give me a bit of perspective and Buddy is not unfinishable. Indeed, in some ways, it is actually an alright book which tells a reasonably interesting story. It is pretty grim, with broken homes and poverty and criminality and general lack-of-fitting-in-ness. It is also reasonably dated now, in terms of situations and some attitudes towards different races (although this is frowned upon within the novel by the characters we sympathise with). It would need contextualising, but then so will the other texts I've ear-marked as being appropriate for year 7. It is now a book I would consider teaching which at least shows progress from when I was at school. It is also, however, yet another miserable book: why are all school set texts so depressing?
Also, check out that front cover. What on earth is wrong with Buddy's face in it? I mean, it does pretty much reflect the grim miserable-ness of the novel, but why is he green? It's such an odd front cover. Especially when you compare it with this more updated version:
Here, Buddy has been made older and, dare I say, more attractive? More like somebody off of Grange Hill circa 2000 than Byker Grove circa 1988. This is admirable in its attempt to appeal more to kids, but is also a little misleading.
There is apparently also a film. I'm imagining it to be something like a cross between Kes and those strange Look and Read BBC schools programmes in the 80s and 90s.
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