We Are All Cracked - Fran Brady
A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending a book launch in Glasgow. The author, Irene Howat, is a writing buddy of mine and I like and admire her and her writing. She has been a prolific writer: biographies, poems, books for children and for adults. Her latest book, The Crackit Cup, just thirty-two pages long, is something quite special, if not unique. It is written in both Scots and English simultaneously, with Scots on the left page and its English translation on the right. The story is told in verse, in the style of the great epics and sagas. But Tumheidit Tam (Empty-headed Tam) , the ‘simple’ central character, would be amazed at being compared with anything so grand. It is set during the First World War: all the young men in Tam’s village are enthusiastically enlisting; but Tam is rejected (due to his mental disability). ‘The King had nothing I could do for him.’ As the village gradually los...