Millions

Product Information

This edition of Frank Cottrell-Boyce's Carnegie Medal-winning Millions features fantastic cover artwork from the brilliant Steven Lenton. As a teacher finding this book (with an innocent, child-friendly cover) it was quite a shock to see some of the content inside. 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! but as it turns out, it is an amazing story and I am so glad that we got the chance to give it a try.

My least favorite part of the novel was when the boys’ do not accept Dorothy into their home to make dinner. This was a really cute story about growing up, and learning about how great (and burdensome) money can be. But how they would win, and what the answer was, I didn't know until the last, very satisfying, page. Frank's second novel, Framed, was published in September 2005 and shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Award and the Guardian Prize.It's a personal thing, and probably unique to a smaller group of 10 year olds, but my son really struggled to follow the story line because of the way the dialogue is tagged - that means that it doesn't say "he said" or "said Jamie" or "said the Teacher", etc. I thought the book was overall mediocre but there were aspects that I did like and I could see why people would like the novel but personally I didn’t. Set in England just before British adoption of the euro (a fictional event) the story features two boys who must decide what to do with a windfall in expiring currency.

I think this story worked because the book showed both before and after the characters gained all the money and it made me see that the characters were more likable in the beginning of the novel. But what would you do if a massive bag of cash dropped from the sky and you had only a few days to spend it before it became worthless? The real estate and financial commentary of the protagonist's older brother, Anthony, is one example that comes to mind. They think of two different suspects but eventually they find their money and end up with 20,345 Euros.Rather, I wanted the author to take any sort of stand instead of leaving the issues of responsibility, charity, and honesty so murky.