Tapping fimmakers Carl Hunter and Clare Heney (who had previously been asked to make that documentary about the book’s source material) was perfect. m. Check out our two online journals, WOW Review and WOW Stories , and keep up with WOW’s news and events. Two refugee brothers from Mongolia arrive at a school in Bootle, and the stories and experiences that they share with their new friend and guide, Julie, will change the way she sees the people and places of her childhood forever. Photographs taken by Chingis with a Polaroid camera are reproduced but are they really pictures of Mongolia?

And in that moment, I felt my own ignorance spread suddenly out behind me like a pair of wings, and every single thing I didn’t know was a feather on those wings. What's clear, however, in the metanarrative is that Britain's immigration policies are causing dramatic changes not only in the lives of refugees as they try to assimilate, but also in the lives of those around them when immigrants who've become a valued part of a community are suddenly deported. His previous books have dealt with larger than life opportunities (kids posing as adults and going to space, needing to spend a million pounds as fast as possible, etc.Cottrell Boyce once named education secretary Michael Gove on a list of "dislikes", but generally prefers to keep Westminster at a distance. This book is also unique in that it's produced like a notebook, with the text printed on loose-leaf-like paper with accompanying polaroid photos in full colour. It had a nice sense of mysteriousness about it as the author fumbles her way through learning about Chingis and Yergui and tries to be a "Good Guide" for them as they try to get adjusted to school life after coming from Mongolia. From his account it is a warm and close family, with the youngest children home-schooled mainly because their parents like having everyone together in the house, but also to shield them from the highly commercialised peer pressure Cottrell Boyce describes as "weaponised advertising".

In Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the flying car with a mind of its own, he was presented with a readymade vehicle with which to attempt all these things. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives. I don’t think I would have selected author Frank Cottrell Boyce to shed any light on the country or its inhabitants. As it is, presented as if in a notebook with Chingis’ photos (the significance of both notebook and photos emerges), this is bound to intrigue and delight all through - and the ending, sudden and a sort of resolution of the mysteries Julie puzzles over, has a marvellous truthfulness to it.

Living in Oxford was blissful, romantic: "To have a baby when you're a postgrad student at Oxford, what a doddle.

The book is so funny and quick though that the reader is already engaged with the characters by the time this is revealed and so it will appeal to plenty of kids who would otherwise shy away from issues fiction. From the point of view of our unreliable and naive storyteller Julie (in that she is very much still in the process of figuring the brothers out), it's hard to tell what actions that Nergui and Chingis take are from their traditions and what are results of changes. Cottrell Boyce wrote several more Winterbottom films including Welcome to Sarajevo, about the journalists who covered the Bosnian war, and 24 Hour Party People, about the 1980s "Madchester" musical scene and Factory Records boss Tony Wilson (played by Steve Coogan).The problem I had with Chitty is that people remember the movie, which is a Dahl movie [Dahl wrote the screenplay] … there's a supercar, a supervillain and lots of sexual perversity.

I have found out that it is an absolutely enormous country and once it had the biggest Empire that the world has ever known.An intriguing book, partly because of its format, with its notebook lined pages and photographs smattered throughout. The Unforgotten Coat of the title belongs to Chingis, one of two Mongolian brothers, who Julie knew as a child.