My Name is Mina is the prequel to David Almond’s award-winning, bestselling and superb first novel, Skellig. But forget all that for now, because My Name Is Mina is a wonderful book in its own right, perhaps an even better one than Skellig.
Mina McKee is a young girl whose father has died and who lives alone with her mother. To try to describe Mina in a word would be to fall into the same trap as several characters in the book – especially the representatives of the school system. A “misfit” to her teachers, a “disgrace” to the Principal, “crazy” and “bonkers” to her peers, Mina has left school and is being home-schooled by her mum, a thing that they find entirely excellent. Mina keeps a journal, her life in her own words. Mina records everything; stories, dreams, experiences, thoughts, poems, songs.
Thank you, David Almond for this happy, crazy, sad and at times very weird book. I cannot remember when a book last filled me with such joy of reading something so original and fabulous.
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