NZ+Authors


 * **The ten pm question by Kate De Gold**

This book is about a 12-year-old boy called Frankie Parsons. Frankie worries. He worries a lot, about everything. Along with an enormous list of bird names, Chillun vocabulary (the exclusive language of Frankie and his best friend Gigs) and cricket batting shots, there is a never ending list of terrifyingly possible diseases he could catch swirling in his brain and a high-pitched malevolent rodent voice which constantly whispers Frankie's worst fears into his brain, especially at night. Punctually at 10pm every night Frankie pads across the landing to Ma's room to look for comfort and Ma always assures him that everything will be fine. But Frankie's Ma is not like other people's Ma's. If Frankie goes away to camp, who will look after Ma and keep her company and help her with her baking? His big brother Louie has moved out and comes home for laundry, occasional meals and to raid piggy banks, his sister Gordana is always out or on the phone to one of her 47 friends, Uncle George, Frankie's father, has to go to work, and apart from their fortnightly visits, The Aunties are usually busy going to the movies or attending lectures or doing aerobics. And if Frankie goes away to camp, who will answer his punctual, worried, 10pm questions?

**reviewed by Alex** ||

**4th July 2013**
The 10pm Question is about a 12 year old boy named Frankie and his journey from meeting Sydney Vickerman until her leaving. We meet Frankie Parsons and his best friend Gigs, whom have such a close relationship that they even invented their own language, a mixture of Russian and Pig Latin. They both meet the new girl Sydney who they slowly becomes friends with (Frankie was quicker to welcome her than Gigs). We also hear about Frankie’s family which includes his sibling, Gordana and Louie, his parents Ma and Uncle George, and his boastful, overweight great aunts called the Aunties. We learn the Ma has not left the home for nine years and that her parents died in a car crash when she was little, leaving her to grow up with the Aunties and to develop her great skill and love for baking. Frankie is always worrying about everything with gets on everybody’s nerves accept Ma’s. Frankie and Sydney are set the task of writing and illustrating a story which they title // The Valiant Ranger. // We come to find that the reason that Sydney is always moving is because of her mother’s ‘job’. Frankie’s world starts to become unwound as Sydney makes him question thing he never did before, like the fact off why his mother never leaves the house. Frankie finds out that Sydney will be leaving earlier than expected and becomes enclosed in his own little world. Frankie later comes to terms with this and decides that he will still keep in contact with her overseas.

I found that this book had a very interesting insight into the lives of someone with an anxiety disorder. Frankie’s relationship with him and his mother is very touching and moving. Frankie’s worries about his mother to the point that it gets a little overpowering. I think that this shows great companionship and trust between the two as Ma is always trusting and relying on Frankie to get stuff from outside the house for her as she can’t. I also liked how Frankie’s family was a great family unit and worked and compromised for each other. When Frankie finds out that Sydney is leaving, Gordana, who is always mean to him, shows a softer, more compassionate side to her as she tries to comfort Frankie and puts up with some of his questions. The family always was arguing and fighting about everything and I think this shows how well they works as a family. I also liked how the author portrayed all the different characters in the book. She gave them all very realistic personas that I think a lot of us can relate to, like having a grumpy older sister or aunts that are very boisterous, but this made the family seem more believable to me.

On the down side to things I found that this book was really hard to get into and was constantly finding myself finding ways to put it off. Even though at the start of the book I found it hard, as I got further into the book it became slightly easier to read and understand. The cutaways were very annoying in my opinion as I became a little muddled as to what timeline some of the stuff was in. For instance, near the start of the book it shows Frankie having a conversation to Gigs on the bus. Suddenly it changes to Gordana babysitting and then on to how the Fat-Controller calmed down Uncle George. I found this bit a bit hard to understand and I had o go back and re-read it a couple of times for I to make sense. Something that I found both positive and negative was the amount of description it had. At times the description was okay and didn’t describe too much detail, but then in other parts it goes so into depth that I forget what I was previously reading about. When Frankie is describing the journey to his school, I feel that it goes into too much description as some bits we didn’t need to know about. This brings me to my last point. I found that the book had a lot of unnessecery information that did not really contribute to the overall story.

My opinion on this novel is that I think it is a novel that is not for me as I found it very hard to get into. I thought that some other people might find it as a good book and enjoy it but I found that it just didn’t hook me in and didn’t really excite me.