Philip Gross & Jonathan Gross

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Biographical note:  Philip Gross is a writer of many parts – from prize-winning poetry to teenage novels of high suspense and unsettling depths. Son of a wartime refugee from Estonia and a Cornish schoolmaster’s daughter, his work explores borderlines – between childhood and adult life, between fantasy and reality. He has two grown-up children and a grandson, and lives in Penarth with his wife Zélie. He has led writing workshops in schools for twenty years, and is Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844717224
ISBN:  9781844717224
Author:  Philip Gross
Title:  Off Road to Everywhere
Series:  Children's Poetry Library
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  YCET2
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Jun-10
Extent:  96pp
Height:  178 mm
Width:  110 mm
Thickness:  7 mm
Weight:  144 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 6.99
Price:  USD 9.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  Born out of twenty years of helping young writers find skill and delight in poetry, these poems speak to adults and children alike, opening our eyes to the world around us and inside ourselves. Most of all, they invite the reader to pick up a pen and write themselves.

Main description:  Philip Gross’s classics of poetry for children, Manifold Manor, The All-Nite Café and Scratch City, set a benchmark in the 1990s for opening doors to rich worlds of language and imagination. Off Road To Everywhere takes the challenge into a new century. These poems grow out of twenty years of creative writing work with young people, inviting readers to click out of passive consumer mode and think like writers themselves.

Sequences like ‘Dreams of an Inland Lighthouse Keeper’ offer games, techniques and exercises to be used in writing groups for many ages. This is multi-layered poetry, playful, thoughtful and technically brilliant – as gripping in performance as it is on the page.

Inviting but completely unpatronising to young readers, welcoming to adults who think that they don’t like poetry, these poems open our eyes to the world and to the riches of language as the birthright of everyone. They speak to all ages, and sit confidently on the bookshelf next to Philip Gross’s prize-winning work for adults.

Table of contents:
Contents
Acknowledgements
Camper Van Dreaming
White Ones
Dreams of an Inland
Lighthouse-Keeper
Hide
Left Luggage From The Lost and Found
The Gopher’s Tale
Take A City
Petra and the Wolf
Amelia’s Lunch
Nanny Neverley
Master Moebius Presents …
Love Songs in the Key of Y
Saying When
Short Exposures
Fire Says
Stone Says
The Living Room
In Every Room There Is One
By Gum
More Luggage From The Lost and Found
In Perspective
A Spider in
Grandfather’s Shed
In The Lost Garden
Shadow Party
Tide Rising Near Tintagel
Rain In The Rhondda
Big Muddy Blues
The Old Wife’s Tale
My Place
Room Inside

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Excerpt from book:  

Nanny Neverley

Old Nanny Neverley
came from Back There.
She sat in the sunshine
with frost in her hair.
I’m going home soon, she said.
Never said where.

Sweet crumbly biscuits,
ghostly-grey tea
and a smile would be waiting.
She listened to me
and sometimes to someone else
I couldn’t see

and when we fell silent
and couldn’t say why
she glanced at the window.
She smiled at the sky.
Look, there, you missed it.
An angel went by.

It was one of her stories,
like: I’m growing too;
you grow up, l grow down …
She told lies, I knew.
Only, now that she’s gone
nothing else seems quite true.

Previous review quote:  An exciting and original poet … He is prepared to take risks. He challenges with rich and unusual language, and he takes poetry for children into a territory of strong emotions, often hauntingly expressed. There is no one else writing quite as he does.

Helen Dunmore
Poetry Review

Previous review quote:  … an elegant exhibition of craftsmanship and intellectual mystery …. You go back to Philip Gross’s poems as they re-echo in your head … Here is writing at the upper edge of children’s poetry

Signal Award judges' report
Signal Award for Poetry for Children

Previous review quote:  Philip Gross has pioneered a new form of writing for young readers in which he sets Everest-high standards not only in content but also in the skilful use of form, construction, rhyme and rhythm in the poems. Scratch City deserves to be widely read. It is thought-provoking, enriching and a fine example of craftsmanship in creative writing

Junior Bookshelf

Previous review quote:  This is a world of playful conceits and chilly intimations in which voices carry on the wind, lost souls press for recognition, doors become mirrors and mirrors doors. Wordplay is the key to understanding, and the whole enterprise is cleverly designed to nudge young readers into an awareness… that through their own writing they can unlock more than they might have bargained for.

Times Educational Supplement