Rebooting…A Stone Cold Classic
As a profession, I think we are often guilty of blindly seeking out “the next big thing” – the adventurous step forward, the new and shiny thing to impress pupils, parents, managers and colleagues alike. However, as we move into the summer term and are looking for that novelty to “engage the learner”, it may be that the answer lies, not before us but behind us: those once trusted but now long ignored texts, at the back of the book cupboard.
There may a be a hidden gem somewhere on those shelves. Be brave, venture in like an intrepid English-teaching Indiana Jones, picking your way tentatively through the titles. But also beware: not everything is as you remember it. Where there is treasure, there are traps; there are golden idols but there are also poisoned darts.
But there is treasure.
There are novels that, while they are unlikely to ever join the classic canon of literature, are well written, tell a good story and kids love them. Arguably, a gem of this genre is Stone Cold by Robert Swindells. Now, others will have a different Swindells in mind – Room 13, Abomination, Smash - depending on the tastes of whoever did the book ordering in the mid-nineties, but ours is Stone Cold and I think it is time to dust it off for another outing.
At its heart, it is a novel that deals with how we treat vulnerable members of our society. It makes us look at homelessness, mental illness, crime and punishment, friendship and isolation; its dual narrative allows us to consider these ideas from both sides of the tracks, as it were, and has us asking ourselves: what would we do? We follow Link, neglected by his mother and abused by her new partner as he is forced to leave home and journey, Dick Whittington-style to London where of course he quickly discovers the streets are paved with anything but gold. His initial £150 fortune dwindles almost immediately as we see how unregulated landlords can take advantage of a young man in need of some help. The dangers and pitfalls of sleeping rough are dealt with vividly: Link’s fears as he beds down for his first night on the street are made to feel only too real, and his description of his never-dry trainers and the intense cold of sleeping on concrete has stayed with me for years. His friendship with Ginger and his relationship with, the arguably unscrupulous, Gail feel like glimmers of hope in a grim world, but there are no Hollywood endings for Link.
It is also, don’t forget, the story of a serial killer: Shelter, a former soldier on a one-man mission to clean up the streets of London and turn his victims into his own personal army under the floorboards; a man, who after having given his all to Queen and Country, now also feels discarded and forgotten. It is a very dark narrative strand and his pursuit of Link is genuinely exciting.
There is even a serviceable TV series to accompany it – although there are a couple of performances of certain characters that might have you rooting for Shelter, so exercise caution.
Ok, it’s not perfect. Everyone is white and the only female characters are Link’s fairly heartless mother and Gail, the exploitative journalist. But it is an exciting and engaging novel and in terms of pupil engagement, you can’t ask for much more than that.
So this term, be brave, venture into that book cupboard; watch where you step and look carefully – there’s treasure to be found.
Our guest blogger this month is Malcolm Alexander, an experienced and very brilliant teacher of English at Dunfermline High School