Someday, Angeline

Louis Sachar (author)

Bloomsbury, UK: 1983; 177pp

ISBN: 9780747587231

Genre: realistic fiction

Issues: bullying, differences, family, friendship, gifted, identity, peer pressure

Angeline Persopolis is not your average child. Her first spoken word was ‘octopus'. She somehow just seems to know things that there is no way a child of her age could know. Adults give up trying to work out how she knows and simply label her a genius.

When she goes to school, age eight, she is put into Year 6 because there's nowhere else to put her. The students call her ‘freak' and the teacher feels threatened by having a child in her class who is more intelligent than she is.

Angeline doesn't understand why everybody seems to dislike her; why she has no friends; why her fellow students are always rude and unkind. Even Angeline's father, a garbage man, seems afraid of her and has trouble talking to her, especially since his wife died.

Then Angeline meets a Year 5 boy who makes her laugh and suddenly two lonely people have found a friend in each other. Unfortunately it's not enough to enable Angeline to cope with her bullying teacher and one day all her frustration and unhappiness explode out of her in a most unexpected way. Horrified by what she has done, Angeline flees to the only place she feels happy - the aquarium.

This is a wonderfully sympathetic story about a profoundly gifted child and her struggle to be accepted as a person with needs and feelings of her own. The language is poetic in its simplicity, yet the novel is rich in its characterisations, relationships and concepts. Quirky jokes will appeal to all ages and gifted readers, especially, will relate to Angeline's way of looking at - and smelling - the world around her.

Highly recommended.