Are We All Lemmings and Snowflakes?

Product Information

Bourne is represented by The Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency. [3] Her debut novel Soulmates was published in September 2013 by Usborne. [4] David Almond introduces his new picture book, A Way to the Stars, a story about perseverance and finding a way to make dreams come true.

The novel is about a teenager called Olive who joins a summer camp, called Camp Reset, after finding herself in a dark place. But as she settles in she starts to wonder whether it’s the world that needs fixing, not her or her camp friends, so comes up with a plan to put things right. There is this huge theme of kindness running throughout the story. Like its the main big thing/message of the whole book and to be honest i am obsessed with that! I enjoyed reading it though, and I think this is a good book if you don't know much about mental illnesses and what it's like to have them. It just so much more than a book, it kinda gives out to you a much better, healthier and a positive way of living with people around you and even yourself.

Multibuys

Oh God, I can feel this thought blooming. Like on those nature programmes when they shove a camera onto a flower seed and show footage of it growing really really fast. I feel the roots go into the earth and I feel the stem start to grow and I feel the leaves unfurling and the petals turning pink one by one.' (p240-241)* Are We All Lemmings and Snowflakes? by Holly Bourne is a gripping contemporary YA novel dealing with the issue of mental health. It revolves around Olive and more people of her age who suffers from mental illness and their shot at ‘normality’ at Camp Reset. We get an interesting cast of characters in Camp Reset just as well and I liked the diversity of them all dealing with different mental illnesses. I especially liked Lewis, kind and sweet, loving-maths-Lewis.

Olive goes with the hope of getting fixed, but what she gets is much more than she bargained for. It’s not just the noise, the other kids, the secret side projects, the American counsellors and the strange amount of alpacas that she has to deal with, it’s everything she thinks she is, colliding with the possibility that she doesn’t have to be this way. But collisions can have colossal consequences, and Olive may not be ready for what’s coming. I reeeally hated Jamie. First because he is such a stereotype, and because I don't like the band-cool-guy-type anyway. Also because of the scene where he jokes that he is a sex addict and makes a lot of comments about it to Hannah; the entire scene comes of as a pretty bad crossing of boundaries and harrassment, and it's just taken as a joke, which I think is not okay. Yep, and call us crazy when we don't. And give us therapy and meds and freaking alpacas until we can be moulded into something at can at least pretend it divides nicely into the world."' (p223-224)*

Young Adult fiction takes over the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2018". Edinburgh Festival. 12 July 2018 . Retrieved 3 September 2018. If you are a reader who is unfamiliar about mental illness, you’d probably read this book and react like ‘this is intense and all over the place, what is this?’ and my honest answer to that is, it’s reality. This is such a realistic and honest representation of bipolar, I’m actually struggling to express how brilliantly realistic this book is. Are We All Lemmings and Snowflakes? reminds me a lot of Am I Normal Yet?. Bourne is a master at talking about mental health for sure. I love how compassionate, how tender this book is in so many ways. I do wish that we had learned more about Olive’s life before coming to this camp—we only barely meet her best friend, Ally, and only hear superficially about stresses she experienced in the past school year. I understand the focus is on her experience at camp, yet I don’t really feel like I got to know Olive as well as I could.

I do appreciate the concept really but I don't know, it's just hardly believable. Just because a group of teens decided to spread thousands of motivational messages from a rooftop onto the carnival doesn't mean it will compel people to be instantly kind and start hugging each other and that actually happened at the end of the story. Gah! Bourne is a former news journalist, and was nominated for Best Print Journalist of the Year in 2010 [18] while working as a news reporter at the Surrey Mirror. [4] She graduated from the University of Sheffield [19] with a first-class degree in Journalism. [20] Bibliography [ edit ] Standalone novels [ edit ] The writing is hilarious and witty and Bourne, totally aces the incredibly touchy topic of mental health. The content is incredibly honest and never even for a moment gets pretentious or preachy. She seem to totally GET IT! The part with the kindness virus was pretty ridiculous to me, to be honest. I thought the idea itself was not well thought out by itself, plus I doubt people in that situation are so easily convinced to take time from their free therapy that normally is incredibly expensive and that a bunch of teens wouldn't use social media for that kind of project, which would have a far wider reach. confessionsofabooklover (25 July 2015). "Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne – review". The Guardian . Retrieved 8 May 2018.The concept intrigued me immediately. As a mental health warrior myself and having attended group treatment programmes in my youth, I had an understanding and personal attachment to the subject matter. However, I think that may have hindered my enjoyment of it somewhat, as any inaccuracies or problematic things, jumped out at me quite a bit.