Title: Colin Fischer
Author: Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz
Who’s it for? Teen
What’s it about? Colin Fischer doesn’t like to be touched. Or the colour blue. He avoids eye contact unless absolutely necessary. Sherlock Holmes has a place of honour on his wall. His room is a shrine to clear-headed logic. When a phone rings loudly in class, Colin can’t cope. So he barks like a dog. But when a gun goes off in the school cafeteria he isn’t scared. He’s curious … Colin Fischer is determined to discover who fired that gun.
What’s good about it? Colin is wonderful and the way he looks at the world and deals with its strangeness is utterly fascinating. His relationships with his classmates and his family are brilliantly done, but I most loved his interactions with his parents and Mr Turrentine. The contrast between those two differing relationships is interesting too; his parents, familiar and practised in their handling of him, respecting his boundaries; Mr Turrentine, not taking no for an answer, brashly – yet patiently – teaching him basketball.
