Twelfth Day of July (Puffin Teenage Fiction) [Paperback]

Joan Lingard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 1995 | Series: Puffin Teenage Fiction

Sadie is Protestant, Kevin is Catholic - and on the tense streets of Belfast their lives collide. It starts with a dare - kids fooling around - but soon becomes something dangerous. Getting to know Sadie Jackson will change Kevin's life forever. But will the world around them change too? This is the first of Joan Lingard's ground-breaking Kevin and Sadie books.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Joan Lingard was born in Edinburgh and grew up in Belfast where she lived until she was eighteen. She began to write when she was eleven years old and always wanted to be a writer. She is particularly well-known for the Kevin and Sadie titles, beginning with THE TWELFTH DAY OF JULY, which are set against the troubled background of Ireland. Joan was given an MBE for distinguished service to children's literature. She lives in Edinburgh.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Puffin Books (March 30, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140371753
• ISBN-13: 978-0140371758
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #825,746 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting whether or not you know the background, January 28, 2005

By 

William Whyte (Somerville, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Twelfth Day of July (Puffin Teenage Fiction) (Paperback)

This is a book for young teenagers, set against the backdrop of Northern Ireland just before the outbreak of the Troubles.

The plot is simple: a feisty Catholic boy and a feisty Protestant girl, living in inner-city Belfast neighbourhoods separated only by a main road, lead alternate mischief-making expeditions into each other's territory until things get out of hand and a sacrifice, Romeo and Juliet style, is required to bring the sides back to their senses. The characterization is a bit perfunctory (Kevin is feisty; Sadie, on the other hand, is feisty) but the setting, leading up to the Twelfth, is well drawn. The book was written in 1970 and is unobtrusively matter-of-fact about being poor at the time: no-one has a phone, cars break down all the time, and chip pan fires play a prominent role. The police are not reacted to in an openly sectarian way, as you imagine they would have been if the book had been written only a few years later, but it's noticeable that the Catholic parents are spoiling for a fight with them more than the Protestant parents are. Missing from the book's even-handedness is any strong sense of the real asymmetry of rhetoric that you experience on the ground (Catholics are inferior, Protestants are oppressive): actions on one side are almost exactly mirrored on the other, and when the symmetry is broken it's done against type (the Catholic girl is painstaking, the Protestant girl is careless). The best parts are the set pieces: a trip to the zoo, a trip to the beach, and especially the climactic scene where, without it ever having been explicitly stated, everyone becomes aware that a big fight's coming up.