Blog Tour: Scissors, Sisters and Manic Panics - Ellie Phillips

Today I'm taking part in the blog tour for 'Scissors, Sisters and Manic Panics' by Ellie Phillips.  Ellie has written a fantastic guest post about the setting of the book so you can visit some of the places that are special to the main character Sadie.  

Both Dads, Geeks and Blue-Haired Freaks and its sequel Scissors, Sisters and Manic Panics are set in East London – for those keen on a postcode; E9, and for those who know E9; – Vicky Park to be even more precise.

If you don’t know Victoria Park it’s a little oasis – one of the biggest parks in the East End of London. These days it joins onto Mile End Park via a ‘green bridge’ that was built as a project for the millennium I believe. So it’s a vast green space, often used for concerts and ‘happenings’ these days like ‘Lovebox’ and ‘Underage’ and ‘Field Day’. I lived right by the park – at Mile End and later in E9 for a number of years and there was always something going on around there. There were heaps of kids – there was a school on Victoria Park Road, and it felt as if there was life and drama everywhere. Oddly, even though it was slap bang in the middle of London, the area itself felt small and enclosed – flanked by a park at one end and by a main road at the other – quite like an island. I’m not going to use the word ‘village-y’ or I start to sound like an estate agent. But it felt self-contained and manageable as a location for a novel.
 



I am very bad at geography, maps and just about anything that requires me to visualise spaces. So I had to use the space I was living in at the time to set my novel in. I imagined looking at it through my heroine, Sadie’s, eyes because I know those streets so well. I know all the businesses around those streets too – so that helped. There are characters who appear in the books who are completely real; Ken from the Newsagents, the 50p Lady, Colin from the Vietnamese restaurant - they are all real.

In Scissors, Sisters and Manic Panics there’s quite a lot set along Roman Road in Bow - where the salon Stylee Stylee is situated. And again, this is a road I know well – with its schmatter market and shops, so it was very easy for me to visualise Sadie’s view out of the shop window as she washed and swept and foiled up the clients.

I like to think that Sadie is a realistic character from a realistic setting. She’s a great, confused ethnic combination for one thing – just like the East End used to be and still is in parts - and with that combination comes colour and noise and a clash of cultures. There’s also grim determination in there – Sadie aspires to leap beyond the bounds of her milieu. She’s also a bit dismissive of, for example, what her Aunt has built up with her hairdressing business. Sadie wants something decidedly more shiny and exciting. The East End of London – especially that particular pocket of Hackney, E9 – has changed so much even over the last 10 years with all the young incomers and new businesses, I think it must have an affect on young people growing up there. There will be some who feel alienated and pushed out of ‘their area’ – and quite rightly so, but there will be others, like Sadie Nathanson, who see the glamour and the shine of the new businesses and the fashionable incomers, and who just want a piece of it.

Ellie has also created a brilliant hair-quiz here.  Give it a go and see if you are a sister of the scissors or a manic panicker.

Review: Scissors, Sisters and Manic Panics - Ellie Phillips

Scissors, Sisters and Manic Panics by Ellie Phillips, published by Electric Monkey on 3rd June 2013

Goodreads synopsis:
Sadie Nathanson's back - with more style and tangles than ever before. "Mrs Nellist came in for her cut and colour while Auntie and Tiffany were out the back having a coffee, leaving me to sweep up, and that's kind of where everything got really ugly. It was the hairstyle that Mrs Nellist never knew she wanted. That's all it was about. I don't know why everyone had to go so completely hysterical about it, but that's my family for you." Sadie Nathanson is back! After sorting out exactly who she is, she now feels ready to tackle who she is going to be! With hair as her focus, Sadie decides to enter a major hairdressing competition - though she has her work cut out for her when she gets fired from her Saturday job in Auntie Lilah's salon. And if that's not bad enough, it turns out there are yet still more surprises in store Dadwise...

Review:
Sometimes there is nothing better than kicking back and relaxing with a good book and checking in with a familiar face.  That's exactly how I felt when I picked up Ellie Phillip's new book and plunged back into the crazy, hairstyle loving world of irrepressible heroine Sadie Nathanson. 

Sadie is now working in her Auntie's hairdressing salon as a Saturday assistant but spends most of her time sweeping the floors.  She dreams of winning the Thames Gateway Junior Apprentice Hairdresser of the Year Award but things get off to a bad start when things go awry in the salon.  In addition, after previously finding her biological Dad, there's also another surprise in store for her as she discovers a new family link. 

I loved the way in which each chapter begins with some advice and guidelines for budding hairdressers.  This was a nice touch and often linked neatly with what was actually happening to Sadie in the story.  Her determination to follow her dream of being the best hairdresser ever is admirable.  For Sadie, cutting hair is like a vocation and she definitely has a talent for knowing what style suits each individual. 

There's a lovely relaxed style to Ellie Phillip's writing which instantly puts you at ease and allows you just to sit back and enjoy the story, forgetting about everything else going on around you.  There's humour, warmth and drama and plenty of fun unfolds along the way.  Sadie is a fantastic main character who I found myself cheering for, along with the rest of her huge extended family. 

Hotly Anticipated Reads for 2013: Egmont's Electric Monkey

Egmont is the publisher of one of my absolute favourite books, 'Forgotten' by Cat Patrick. They have some stellar titles lined up for 2013 (January-June) under their imprint Electric Monkey (although I'm still gutted that they aren't publishing the last book in Cynthia Hand's trilogy), so here's a selection of the ones which I'm most eagerly anticipating for next year.

All links go to Goodreads where you can add all of these books to your wishlist!

* Finished cover art may not be available yet for all titles

From What I Remember by Stacy Kramer and Valerie Thomas, published 7th January

KYLIE: MEXICO WHAT? I should be putting the finishing touches on my valedictorian speech. Graduation is TODAY, and is this a wedding band on my finger.

MAX: It all started with Kylie's laptop and a truck full of stolen electronics. Okay, it was kind of hot, the way she broke us out like some chick in an action movie. But now we're stranded in Tijuana. With less than twenty-four hours before graduation. Awesome.

WILL: Saving Kylie Flores from herself is kind of a full-time occupation. Luckily, I, Will Bixby, was born for the job. And when I found out she was stuck in Mexico with dreamy Max Langston, sure, I agreed to bring their passports across the border -- but there's no reason to rush back home right away. This party is just getting started.

LILY: I just walked in on my boyfriend, Max Langston, canoodling with Kylie Flores, freak of the century. Still, I can't completely hold it against him. He NEEDS me. It's even clearer now. And I'm not giving him up without a fight.

Survive by Alex Morel, published in February

Jane is on a plane on her way home to Montclair, New Jersey, from a mental hospital. She is about to kill herself. Just before she can swallow a lethal dose of pills, the plane hits turbulence and everything goes black. Jane wakes up amidst piles of wreckage and charred bodies on a snowy mountaintop. There is only one other survivor: a boy named Paul, who inspires Jane to want to fight for her life for the first time.

Jane and Paul scale icy slopes and huddle together for warmth at night, forging an intense emotional bond. But the wilderness is a vast and lethal force, and only one of them will survive.

Skinny by Donna Cooner, published 4th February

Hopeless. Freak. Elephant. Pitiful. These are the words of Skinny, the vicious voice that lives inside fifteen-year-old Ever Davies’s head. Skinny tells Ever all the dark thoughts her classmates have about her. Ever knows she weighs over three hundred pounds, knows she’ll probably never be loved, and Skinny makes sure she never forgets it.

But there is another voice: Ever’s singing voice, which is beautiful but has been silenced by Skinny. Partly in the hopes of trying out for the school musical—and partly to try and save her own life—Ever decides to undergo a risky surgery that may help her lose weight and start over.

With the support of her best friend, Ever begins the uphill battle toward change. But demons, she finds, are not so easy to shake, not even as she sheds pounds. Because Skinny is still around. And Ever will have to confront that voice before she can truly find her own.

Finding Cherokee Brown by Siobhan Curham, published 7th March

His lips touched mine and for one split second the whole world stopped. Then every cell in my body fizzed into life...When I decided to write a book about my life I thought I'd have to make loads of stuff up. I mean, who wants to read about someone like me? But as soon as I started writing, the weirdest thing happened. I found out I wasn't who I thought I was. And I stopped being scared. Then everything went crazy! Best of all, I discovered that when you finally decide to be brave it's like waving a wand over your life - the most magical things can happen...

By Any Other Name by Laura Jarratt, published 1st April

Nobody can know the truth - her life depends on it. I picked up the book and thumbed through the pages. Names in alphabetical order, names with meanings, names I knew, names I'd never heard of. How to pick? Nothing that would stand out, nothing that would link me to the past - those were the instructions. The past. As if everything that had gone before this moment was buried already. Holly is fifteen years old, but she's only been "Holly" for a matter of months. Because of something that happened, she and her family have had to enter witness protection and have all assumed new identities. All, that is, except her sister Katie, who is autistic. Starting at a new school mid-term is hard enough at the best of times, and Holly has no clue who she is any more. Lonely and angry, she reaches out to friends - new and old. But one wrong move will put all their lives in danger...

Light by Michael Grant, published in April

It’s been more than a year since every person over the age of fourteen disappeared from the town of Perdido Beach, California. In that time, countless battles have been fought: Battles against hunger and lies and plagues and worse, battles of good against evil, and kid against kid. Allegiances have been won, lost, betrayed, and won again; ideologies have been shattered and created anew, and the kids of the FAYZ have begun to believe that their new society is the only life they’ll ever know. But now that the Darkness has found a way to be reborn, the tenuous existence they‘ve established is likely to be shattered for good. Will the kids of Perdido Beach even survive?

The Originals by Cat Patrick, published 6th May

I glance at the three baby portraits. I feel a familiar prickling on the back of my neck. Because I know there's another picture somewhere - and the baby in that photo looks identical to the babies on the wall. Somewhere, there's a photo of the Original. Ella and I look like sisters: triplets, you might think. But that's not what we are at all. We are clones in hiding. We split our lives and exist as one person in the outside world. And we've always been happy. But now I've fallen head-over-heels in love...and that changes everything. Because, to let love in, I need to be allowed to be Me.

Charm and Strange by Stephanie Kuehn, published 3rd June

 'Don't. Please don't say my name. You have no idea who I really am.' No one really knows who Andrew Winston Winters is. Least of all himself. He is part Win, a lonely teenager exiled to a remote boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy. The guy who shuts the whole world out, no matter the cost, because his darkest fear is of himself...of the wolfish predator within. But he's also part Drew, the angry boy with violent impulses that control him. The boy who, one fateful summer, was part of something so terrible it came close to destroying him.

Scissors, Sisters and Manic Panics by Ellie Phillips, published 3rd June

Sadie Nathanson's back - with more style and tangles than ever before. "Mrs Nellist came in for her cut and colour while Auntie and Tiffany were out the back having a coffee, leaving me to sweep up, and that's kind of where everything got really ugly. It was the hairstyle that Mrs Nellist never knew she wanted. That's all it was about. I don't know why everyone had to go so completely hysterical about it, but that's my family for you." Sadie Nathanson is back! After sorting out exactly who she is, she now feels ready to tackle who she is going to be! With hair as her focus, Sadie decides to enter a major hairdressing competition - though she has her work cut out for her when she gets fired from her Saturday job in Auntie Lilah's salon. And if that's not bad enough, it turns out there are yet still more surprises in store Dadwise...

 

Comment and let me know which titles you're most looking forward to in 2013!

Blog tour: Dads, Geeks and Blue Haired Freaks - Ellie Phillips

Today I'm taking part in the blog tour for Ellie Phillips new book 'Dads, Geeks and Blue Haired Freaks'.  This is a sweet and funny read about a girl searching for her biological Dad which I would highly recommend.   

I'd like to welcome Ellie herself to the blog who has written a fantastic post on the subject of identity.

Hairstyle of the Day:

OK I think this one has to be Siouxsie Sioux for anyone who doesn't remember: a crimped and crazy Cleopatra look - like she got struck by lightning!

Identity is a huge issue - for everyone. I mean we spend a lot of our lives trying to work out who we are and exactly where we fit in and of course this changes over time. I mean I was pretty sure I was Anna Pavlova when I was a child and then I wanted to be someone out of The Human League as a teenager. I was furious with my parents one minute and then giggling completely hysterically with my friends the next. My moods altered radically and I changed the way I felt about things continuously. Even as I got dressed in the morning I was asking 'OK - who shall I be today? Am I Tess of the D’Urbervilles or am I Siouxsie Sioux?' I wish I'd been a great hairdresser like Sadie is in Dads Geeks - then I could have really tried out different looks, because you've got to try things out and try things on. The teenage years are a really interesting, fluid time; you make new friends, you form all these new, deep bonds with people and they change you too.

In Dads Geeks Sadie feels like she doesn't fit in because she doesn't know who her 'dad' is. She feels as if she's different - an outsider looking in on all these 'normal' kids who have 'normal' parents. The truth is that most teenagers feel like this a lot of the time. And a lot of adults feel like this too. There are so many ways of being an outsider depending on how you're defining yourself. You can be a different religion/sexuality/ethnicity/personality/body-type to everyone else - think about the ways that you fit in and that you don't fit in with everyone.

In the book Sadie has lost her anchor (her ex-best friend Shonna) and at home her family drives her up the pole. Her fantasy about her 'Dad' is that he'll provide this great alternative. He won't be all loud and embarrassing like her Mum and her Aunt Lilah. He'll be 'unknown and different' and she'll relate to him much better than she does to her existing family.

The truth - of course - turns out to be more complex.

Review: Dads, Geeks and Blue Haired Freaks - Ellie Phillips

Dads, Geeks and Blue Haired Freaks by Ellie Phillips, published by Electric Monkey on 4th June 2012

Goodreads synopsis:
Sadie Nathanson spends her life trying to survive the excruciating embarrassment of simply existing. It’s hard enough being a bit of a shrinking violet within a loud and outspoken extended family, but the unexpected card from ‘Dad’ on her 15th birthday is the last straw.

As ‘Dad’ was an Internet sperm-donor, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that this is a bad joke, probably set up by her ex-best-friend Shonna. But it starts Sadie wondering – just who was her father? Is he the cause of her worry crinkle and wonky bum? What would happen if she tracked him down?

So she decides to do just that. With help from her nerd cousin Billy, his friend Nodding Tony and a regular dose of ‘Haironomics’ (Sadie’s own hairstyle-related philosophy system), they uncover a lot more than they bargain for.

Review:
The premise of this book is interesting and tackled a subject that I hadn't really read about before.  On Sadie's fifteenth birthday she receives a card from her Dad.  An ordinary enough event except for the fact that Sadie doesn't know who her Dad is - he was a sperm donor.  So she sets out to track him down with the help of her cousin and his friend.  Sperm donation isn't a topic that you usually see featured in teen fiction but I like the fact that the author Ellie Phillips wasn't afraid to write about it.

Sadie's hunt for her biological father is touching and quite emotional at times.  She tries to track him down without the knowledge of her mother and with the very few clues she manages to find about his identity.  The whole subject is dealt with sensitively and I was intrigued throughout to see how it was going to be resolved.

Although the book could have potentially been quite heavy and serious, there is a light and fun undercurrent to the story.  Sadie herself is a sweet and humorous central character and has a passion for wild and wacky hairstyles.  In each chapter of the book she tries out a different hairstyle on herself and this was fun to see.

There were a few things that I thought were left slightly unresolved in the book and not explored in enough depth.  In particular, Sadie's friendship with Shonna which I felt was left as a bit of a loose end.  It would have been good to have seen a proper resolution to this.  I would also have liked more of a focus on Sadie and Tony who she has a bit of a flirtation going on with.  There can never be enough romance for me!

If you are looking for a contemporary novel with a difference then try 'Dad, Geeks and Blue Haired Freaks' which deals with a teenager trying to establish her own identity and find her place in the world.