Stone Cold (The Originals)

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First, Link's rejection of the (likely left-leaning) investigative journalist who is, in fact, out there to help him and raise awarenessof youth homelessness. This rejection is comparable with Link's earlier - and rightful - eschewing of 'solcredulists', otherwise known as people who swallow everything given to them by The Sun newspaper and, as a result, ignore homeless kids. In a cruel twist of irony, Link ends up conflating the two differing publications and, instead of seeking solace and raising awareness, continue his miserable life on the streets. It's a neat representation of the self-destructive downward spiral symbolising homelessness. Alternatively, Link's rejection of Gail/Louise can be seen as the character feeling such a degree of betrayal that he brazenly pushes aside help in a rash act of naive and youth-driven emotion over brains. Either way you want to read it, it's a powerful moment. Pharapreising and interpretation due to major educational standards released by a particular educational institution as well as tailored to your educational institution – if different;

Stone Cold (Swindells novel) - Wikipedia

Cold (Heinemann, 1993), which dealt with homelessness, he won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognizing the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject. [1] Biography [ edit ] urn:lcp:stonecoldpuffint00robe:epub:c797206c-4702-4320-8bc0-22ec0ff1ff81 Extramarc OhioLINK Library Catalog Foldoutcount 0 Identifier stonecoldpuffint00robe Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t2v41zp1w Isbn 0140362517 Alcohol: Vince is frequently drunk, which sometimes causes him to threaten or abuse others. At Christmas dinner, everyone but Link drinks. Vince gets drunk and rambles about Link’s laziness, how he’s taking his sister’s money and how he’s spoiling everyone’s Christmas. He first won the Red House Children's Book Award with Brother in the Land (1984), a novel set in a post-apocalyptic world. Swindells was a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and is quoted as saying that the work "... came out of my own anger and frustration ... you can't kill selectively with nuclear weapons, you wipe out millions of people ...". He won three more Red House awards for Room (13), Nightmare Stairs (Short novel, 1998) and Blitzed (Younger readers, 2003). Meanwhile, intermittent chapters describe the ramblings of a disjointed military vet who calls himself Shelter. He is angry at being discharged after many years of service and believes the country’s homeless population is a result of a government conspiracy. He’s taken it upon himself to fight for his country by disposing of drifters. Shelter develops an elaborate plan for luring young homeless people to his house, killing them, dressing them up as his own private army and burying them beneath the floorboards. Convinced that he’s seen Ginger and Link laughing at him, he begins stalking them.

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Vince leers at Mum, making suggestive comments about going to bed and rounding out a decent night. He nudges and winks at Link, trying to get a reaction. Link notes that he never remembers his own father talking about sex or even hinting at it. Link says that something happened between his sister, Carole, and Vince one night when Mum was working late. He never knew the full details, but he had a pretty good idea about what it could have been. Afterward, Mum and Carole fought, and Carole moved in with her boyfriend. In a 2010 by-election and in the 2011 local elections, Swindells stood as the Green Party of England and Wales candidate for the Worth Valley ward of Bradford City Council. In 2010, he took 11% of the vote, putting him in third place. [4] Selected works [ edit ] In 1997, the novel was adapted for a television series of the same title, starring James Gaddas, Peter Howitt and Elizabeth Rider, and produced by Andy Rowley. It was nominated for a Best Children's Drama Award at BAFTA. [2] The short series was shown on Scene.

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The subject matter is not a nice one but I thought it was dealt with well - it was honest, didn't shy from the horrible bits, and didn't overly dramatise/romantise it. It helped raise an important issue in a realistic way. Ginger also shows Link the basics to being on the streets, like the best places to beg and good places to eat. We meet Gail further on in the book, after losing Ginger. As Link is sitting in a cafe, he sees ‘the best looking dosser’ he’s ever seen. Gail is Scottish and not just a dosser. She’s actually a reporter looking for a story on what it’s like to be homeless. Gail came over to sit next to Link, every eye in the place following her. He describes how he feels as Gail sits next to him. “I was acting so cool it was unbelievable but that’s all it was – acting.

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Link meets a young man named Ginger, and the two become friends. They live and beg together, and Ginger teaches Link the finer points of surviving on the streets.

Stone Cold by Robert Swindells | Goodreads

Robert Swindells was born in Bradford in 1939, the eldest of five children. He left the local Secondary Modern School at fifteen to work as a copy holder on the local newspaper. At seventeen he enlisted in the RAF and served for three years, two in Germany. On being discharged he worked as a clerk, engineer and printer until 1969 when he entered college to train as a teacher having obtained five 'O' levels at night-school. His first book ' When Darkness Comes' was written as a college thesis and published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1972. In 1980 he gave up teaching to write full time. He likes travelling and visits many schools each year, talking and reading stories to children. He is the secutatry of his local Peace Movement group. Brother in the Land is his first book for Oxford University Press. He is married with two grown-up daughters and lives in Bradford. to help you write a unique paper. Just talk to our smart assistant Amy and she'll connect you with the best Shelter adopts a cat named Sappho. Although he dislikes cats, he feels excited because the animal gives people the illusion that he is a friendly, inoffensive man. He feels that the cat is going to help him in his mission, which he is prepared to begin. Gail: Gail is the girl who Link later on falls in love with. She is from Glasgow. She left home because of her stepfather; this was also a common link between them. When Link and Gail met he was making up his mind to stay on his own after Ginger disappeared. But soon she created a place in Link’s ongoing life. Link thinks that Gail is not what she looks from outside but still he ignores it and falls in love with her. Gail had a supporting role in the book. I liked the way this character came into Link’s life. Gail at the end tells Link that she is not what she posed. She tells that she is a journalist and was doing a research on the life of homeless people and then she left him. Gail seems selfish at this point, but I guess that is how life goes on. At this stage you develop more sympathy towards Link. Throughout, bland and occasionally awkward language (is "poncy-looking dude" really appropriate for a sixteen-year-old teen from 1993, Bradford?) distract and disinter the more mature reader, but there are a couple of stand out moments:

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The author wrote the book in a very gripping manner so it is easy to imagine how Link feels like and what he thinks about. In my point of view the novel is very realistic in its description of the life on the streets. This is no fairy tale. It’s a grim depiction of homelessness, and a sharp criticism of our apathy towards it. I think that Stone cold was a thrilling and gripping story and the way that Robert Swindells captured the evilness of shelter was amazing. This teaches us a lesson of how bad it is living on the street homeless with a serial killer looking for you. As you can see Link shouldn’t have left home. At least he had his mother to look after and who knows what Vince would’ve done to Link’s mother afterwards. No, I have not really enjoyed reading Robert Swindells' 1993 and Carnegie Medal winning young adult novel Stone Cold all that much. It is textually majorly depressing and often really quite emotionally infuriating even if indeed Stone Cold is brilliantly penned, with Swindells deftly and ingeniously providing points of view from two very different and mostly majorly unreliable narrators (protagonist Link and antagonist Shelter), and for me, not at all pleasurable and comfortable reading by any stretch of the imagination. However, and the above having been said, I also do not think that the author in any manner expects and even wants us as readers to find Stone Cold a reading joy, that instead, Robert Swindells' presented text for Stone Cold is meant to make us squirm, is supposed to render us uncomfortable, angry and to also make us think, with yes, Shelter's musings about killing and why he wants to rid the streets of London of the homeless feeling by necessity horrifying and terrible (and in particular so since one kind of knows that there are in fact many people, including police officers, politicians etc. who pretty much have similar attitudes to Shelter even if they do not abduct and murder the homeless, even if they do not actually put what Shelter is depicted as doing in Stone Cold into practice, and not to mention that after the police finally manage to arrest Shelter and incarcerate him, Link realises that while in jail, psychotic killer and all-round lowlife Shelter will actually have a roof over his head and three meals a day, but the homeless will still be out in the cold, despised, forgotten and desperately fighting to survive). Overall I think that this novel is very good and I would recommend it to fans of realistic horror novels but I think most people would enjoy because of the various theme that it uses. It is definitely a novel aimed at the older reader as the ideas in the novel can be a bit heavy going and may scare younger readers. I would rate this novel a 3 out of 5. Smoking: Several people smoke, including Link, in an effort to curb their hunger. Since the book is British, the word fag is often used for the word cigarette. Gail takes a long telephone call and Link wanders off by himself, where he is approached by an old man. Unbeknownst to Link, it is Shelter, who uses the excuse of a missing cat to lure Link into a building.

Stone Cold | KS3 English Literature | Beyond Secondary - Twinkl Stone Cold | KS3 English Literature | Beyond Secondary - Twinkl

My sister was talking about this book along with others she had done for her GCSE English and English Language course, among the books she had, this appeared to interest me most. Probably because it was one that I have not read before, even while I was going through my GCSEs. Robert Swindells lives on the Yorkshire moors and is a full-time writer. He has won the Children's Book Award twice, for BROTHER IN THE LAND and for ROOM 13. In 1994, he won the Carnegie Medal for STONE COLD, and also the Sheffield Book Award. It's supposed to be aimed at kids in their early teens and, as you'll probably know, by that age kids tend to want to read books that explore 'darker' themes (well... I did anyway). And, I'm not gonna lie, Stone Cold is pretty bloody dark.

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I can't remember this much but i swear there was a murder thing going on but i will have to find out as my memory is so bad and I am not even joking on this matter. Swindells won the annual Carnegie Medal recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. [1] Television [ edit ] Bradford City Council Worth Valley By-election results" (PDF). Bradford City Council. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 April 2012. Shelter gives himself a name that he believes will attract homeless people, as he believes they are all looking to be sheltered from something. He says the homeless should brace themselves for what is coming and claims that he is prepared.