Roxy's Baby

Last updated

Roxy's Baby
Roxy's Baby.jpg
First edition
Author Catherine MacPhail
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Bloomsbury
Publication date
6 June 2005
Media typePrint (Paperback)
Pages272 pp
ISBN 978-0-7475-7042-4
OCLC 224311899

Roxy's Baby is a young adult novel by Catherine MacPhail, published in 2005. It is about a fifteen-year-old girl named Roxy who becomes pregnant and subsequently runs away from home.

Contents

Plot

Roxy is a fifteen-year-old girl living with her mother, her younger sister, and her new step-dad. Upset about her father's death and resentful of her mother remarrying, she begins to rebel. She attends a party where she has sex for the first time. Soon realising she's pregnant, Roxy runs away from home in fear. She goes to London, hoping to stay a shelter she read about, but quickly leaves when she realises the woman in charge will phone the police, when she learns Roxy is underage.

Luckily, she finds help in the form of Mr and Mrs Dyce, a couple who host young pregnant women in their country house. Things quickly become suspicious; the girls in the Dyces' care are completely cut off from the rest of the world, not allowed to leave the grounds, or even read newspapers or listen to the radio, and once a girl is sent into the birthing room she's never seen again. The Dyces have answers to all of these, but things still seem odd.

One night Roxy slips out, and discovers the Dyces have an extremely sinister motive behind their kindness...

Reception

It won the 13–16 years category at the 2006 Royal Mail Awards for Scottish Children's Books. [1] It was also shortlisted for the Manchester Book Award and longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. [2] [3]

Related Research Articles

Kathleen Wendy Herald Peyton, who writes primarily as K. M. Peyton, is a British author of fiction for children and young adults.

Elaine Lobl Konigsburg was an American writer and illustrator of children's books and young adult fiction. She is one of six writers to win two Newbery Medals, the venerable American Library Association award for the year's "most distinguished contribution to American children's literature."

<i>Goodnight Mister Tom</i>

Goodnight Mister Tom is a children's novel by English author Michelle Magorian, published by Kestrel in 1981. Harper & Row published an American edition the same year. Set during World War II, it features a boy abused at home in London who is evacuated to the country at the outbreak of the war. In the care of Mister Tom, an elderly recluse, he experiences a new life of loving and care.

Jacqueline Wilson English novelist

Dame Jacqueline Wilson is an English novelist known for her popular children's literature. Her novels have been notable for featuring controversial themes such as adoption and divorce without alienating her large readership. Since her debut novel in 1969, Wilson has written over 100 books.

Margaret Peterson Haddix American author

Margaret Peterson Haddix is an American writer known best for the two children's series, Shadow Children (1998–2006) and The Missing (2008–2015). She also wrote the tenth volume in the multiple-author series The 39 Clues.

<i>Junk</i> (novel)

Junk, known as Smack in the US, is a realistic novel for young adults, written by British author Melvin Burgess and published in 1996 by Andersen in the UK. Set on the streets of Bristol, England, it features two runaway teenagers who join a group of squatters, where they fall into heroin addiction and embrace anarchism. Both critically and commercially, it is the best received of Burgess' novels. Yet it was unusually controversial at first, criticised negatively for its 'how-to' aspect, or its dark realism, or its moral relativism.

<i>A Northern Light</i> Book by Jennifer Donnelly

A Northern Light, or A Gathering Light in the U.K., is an American historical novel for young adults, written by Jennifer Donnelly and published by Harcourt in 2003. The story is known as Realistic Fiction because of the untrue life story of Mattie Gokey, the real death of Grace Brown, and the events that could take place in the 1900s. Set in northern Herkimer County, New York in 1906, it is based on the murder of Grace Brown case —the basis also for An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (1925). It features a girl -the narrator-, who gets caught up in the events.

Sally Gardner is a British children's writer and illustrator. She won both the Costa Children's Book Award and the Carnegie Medal for Maggot Moon. Under her pseudonym Wray Delaney she has also written adult novels.

<i>Double Act</i> (novel) 1995 novel by Jacqueline Wilson

Double Act is a children's novel by Jacqueline Wilson, written in the style of a diary, which features identical twins Ruby and Garnet. Ruby and Garnet love each other dearly but they are completely different. Ruby is loud, outgoing and wild though Garnet is shy, quiet and kind. It was published in 1995, co-illustrated by Sue Heap and Nick Sharratt, and it won both the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize and the Red House Children's Book Award.

<i>The Graveyard Book</i> Novel by Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book is a young adult novel by the English author Neil Gaiman, simultaneously published in Britain and America in 2008. The Graveyard Book traces the story of the boy Nobody "Bod" Owens who is adopted and reared by the supernatural occupants of a graveyard after his family is brutally murdered.

<i>Girl, Missing</i>

Girl, Missing is an English-language young adult thriller novel by Sophie McKenzie, published in 2006.

<i>A Swift Pure Cry</i> 2006 novel by Siobhan Dowd

A Swift Pure Cry is a 2006 novel by Siobhan Dowd about a teenager named Shell who lives in County Cork, Ireland. It won the 2007 Branford Boase Award and the Eilís Dillon Award.

<i>The Knife of Never Letting Go</i> 2008 novel by Patrick Ness

The Knife of Never Letting Go is a young-adult science fiction novel written by British-American author Patrick Ness. It was published by Walker Books on 5 May 2008. It is the first book in the Chaos Walking series, followed by The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men. The story follows Todd Hewitt, a 12-year-old boy who runs away from Prentisstown, a town where everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts, after learning of a secret about its past.

<i>The Other Side of Truth</i> 2000 book by Beverley Naidoo

The Other Side of Truth is a young adult novel about Nigerian political refugees, written by Beverley Naidoo and published by Puffin in 2000. It is set in the autumn of 1995 during the reign in Nigeria of the despot General Abacha, who is waging a campaign of suppression against journalists. A Nigerian girl and her younger brother must leave suddenly after their mother is killed in a failed assassination of their outspoken father. They are sent to London but are abandoned and must cope with the police, social services and school bullies. Naidoo won the 2000 Carnegie Medal, recognising the best children's or young adults' book in English published in the United Kingdom during the preceding school year.

<i>Came Back to Show You I Could Fly</i>

Came Back to Show You I Could Fly is a novel by Robin Klein. It tells the story of a friendship between a lonely 11-year-old boy and a drug-addicted, pregnant 20-year-old woman. It was given the designation of White Raven book at the 1990 Bologna Children's Book Fair. Due to rights issues with the eponymous song, From the Inside, the 1993 film adaptation directed by Richard Lowenstein was named Say a Little Prayer.

<i>Dear Nobody</i>

Dear Nobody is a realistic young-adult novel by Berlie Doherty, published by Hamilton in 1991. Set in the northern England city of Sheffield, it features an unplanned teenage pregnancy and tells the story of its effect on the teenagers and their families.

<i>Bog Child</i> 2008 historical novel by Siobhan Dowd

Bog Child is a historical novel by Siobhan Dowd published by David Fickling (UK) and Random House Children's Books (US) on 9 September 2008, more than a year after her death. Set in the 1980s amid the backdrop of the Troubles of Northern Ireland, it features an 18-year-old boy who must study for exams but experiences "his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for the provisional IRA, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog." In flashback and dream there are elements of the murdered girl's prehistoric or protohistoric life and death.

<i>Bedlam</i> (Kennen novel)

Bedlam is a young adult novel by Ally Kennen, published on 5 January 2009. It was nominated for the 2010 Carnegie Medal.

<i>Goggle-Eyes</i> 1989 childrens novel by Anne Fine

Goggle-Eyes, or My War with Goggle-Eyes in the US, is a children's novel by Anne Fine, published by Hamilton in 1989. It features a girl who thinks she hates her mother's boyfriend. In the frame story, set in a Scottish day school, that girl Kitty tells her friend Helen about hating her mother's boyfriend.

<i>Salt to the Sea</i> Young adult novel by Ruta Sepetys

Salt to the Sea is a 2016 historical fiction young adult novel by Ruta Sepetys. It tells the story of four individuals in World War II who make their way to the ill-fated MV Wilhelm Gustloff. The story also touches on the disappearance of the Amber Room, a world-famous, ornately decorated chamber stolen by the Nazis that has never been recovered.

References