[Total: 3 Average: 4.3/5]
You must sign in to vote
8 thoughts on “Legrand, Claire – The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Before I begin, let me give you a bit of advise: Do NOT read this on a day when you have a lot of homework.
THE CAVENDISH HOME FOR BOYS AND GIRLS is a stunning piece of literature, and it’s plot will ensnare you from the beginning. Class-topper Victoria Wright is a well respected girl, with her name always in the ‘Top of the Class’ achievements listed every year. Every parent would view Victoria as a role model for their child, as she had gotten straight A’s ever since she started school.
Lawrence, a 12 year old boy, is Victoria’s ‘project’. Lawrence is a kind of boy that no one likes, with his shirt untucked and all. However, the only thing that he is transfixed by is music. He spends his weekends playing the piano instead of doing his homework, and Victoria views this as a problem and tries to help him. After a while, they become friends-Lawrence’s only friend, as everyone else shunned him.
One day, Victoria gets a ‘B’ in her report card for music. She is horrified, and conceals it from her mother. Back at school, Jill Hennesey-her rival, almost- mocks Victoria about her ‘B’ and Victoria lashes back by asking:
‘And where’s your sister Jacqueline today, fool?’
Jill laughed. ‘Jacqueline? Jacqueline who?
‘What do you mean Jacqueline who? Your twin sister, idiot.’
A rush of cold slid past Victoria. Jill’s eyes hardened into sharp little points. Her face sharpened like the professors’ had-all wolfish and watchful. This close, it was even more striking. Victoria blinked and looked at the others to see if they had noticed, but they had turned away, laughing and chatting to themselves with bright eyes and bright smiles.
‘Jacqueline’s home sick for a while.’ Jill said, but her voice sounded different now, lower and quieter. It matched her new, wolfish face. She smiled a small smile.
‘What do you care about Jacqueline, Victoria?’
‘I don’t’
***
The bell rang. First period would begin in ten minutes. Victoria spun away from Jill, slammed her books together, and marched towards the door.
Someone shoved ahead of her, hard.
‘Be careful, Victoria,’ Jill murmured in that low voice, rushing past, her hair rippling blood, her purse gleaming silver coins. Victoria watched her glide away into that crowd of students. At the corner, she saw Jill’s face, and it looked normal again.
-Extract from THE CAVENDISH HOME FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
From thus on, Victoria notices how kids start disappearing, until Lawrence disappears, too. The rest of the book points to the Cavendish Home, and the horrifying secrets that lie behind the walls. The portrayal of Mrs Cavendish seems clichéd, almost, almost like Ms Trunchbull from MATILDA by Roald Dahl, but the rest of the book is original. Tons of creativity went into this book, and I loved the ending-it was extremely ambiguous.
Once you start, you can’t stop. You would be ensnared into the book, learning how Victoria unveils the secrets hidden in the marvellous house, and the punishments delivered by Mrs Cavendish. The revelations might shock you, but some parts seemed obvious to me. Legrand paints a imposing image of Mrs Cavendish, who seems evil and vile-even more than the Trunchbull.
Little wonder that this book was awarded the Panda Book Award-the plot was wonderful, although I do wonder if the story was cut short-the parts when Victoria unlocks the secrets of the house seems to quick and cut-short to me.
Read this book competition
What would you do if your best friend disappears?
And what would you give to bring them back?
In the book “The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls”, it tells the story of friendship between Lawrence and Victoria, a very unlikely friendship of people from two different worlds. They are the only friend for each other even thou they refuse to admit it.
Lawrence represents mess. He is a mess with his uniform, a mess with his hair and a mess with his life. The only thing that is not a mess is his hands on a piano, dancing between the ivory and black.
Victoria represents perfection. She is always neat, with perfect room, prefect cloth, perfect manner. The only thing that is not perfect is her B, which is the lowest point of her whole entire life.
And this is when the twist begin. Lawrence one day went missing, and more bad kids starts to disappear. The adults are acting all weird and twitchy, with smiles too perfect and masks too well made. And when Victoria gets suspicious, she must find out what really happened.
What makes a good story? Usually it is fast pacing, with a little Goosebumps, a little magic, a little friendship and a little music. This book have them all and have them perfectly cooked in a pot, with that delicious smell coming off from it.
Victoria started with her instigation, and to her horror, it includes a “Help us” note, a magical house, a crazy old woman and a bit of music. And with a little magic of your fingers to flip open this book, this eyeball grabbing, heart stabbing, breath choking story reveals in front of your eyes.
Go on, don’t stop your hands, read this book about friendship.
This is one of my favorite books recently.
Victoria, a perfectionist, will never allow a B on her report card, but when she got one, she had to find the teacher and plead her to change the score, although covering in deep shame.
Lawrence, a boy with messy hair, messy room, messy everything, except for music. he had a special talent in play pianos, which Victoria admired.
and once the boy went missing, his best and only friend- Victoria went to find him immediately
that year, the town changed. children who had bad grades or imperfect report cards were all missing, and their families and parents didn’t seemed to care, and all of them had a perfect and wolfish smile on their
faces, like a fake mask they are wearing. those children seemed to be simply evaporated.
but Victoria discovered the truth, and had to save the children from a bloody monster.
this book was about friendship, it was a bit creepy in the middle, but it is definitely awesome.
read this book! 🙂
I read this book these days, it was a really fascinating book. The plot surely attracted me into the story, I nearly read that in one day! This book reminds me a game,
Order and Chaos
The absolute Order——Victoria, she is the perfectly perfectionist, top of her class, of every subject, everything in her life is like a formula, they will go the way she wants. She has no friends——But a project named Lawrence——She believe that friends will distract her. She got As since kindergarten, but this time, magically, she got a B…
The Chao——Lawrence, Victoria’s ‘project’, with messy hair and shirt that would never be tacked in. The amazing musician, he could play the piano as awesome as Victoria admire. The story begins, with he is missing one day…
In this town, the town where everyone wants order, the Chaos, including Lawrence, are sent into a mysterious home, The Cavendish Home, it will teach the children what’s right, respectful things to do, although it uses horrible torture… When Victoria is finding her only friends, the absolute order life of hers, become a little bit messy, so she is considered one of them too, she is captured in to the house…
I really like how the author describes the characteristic of the characters, and the compare of the Victoria before and after she goes to the Home.
One of the greatest books of Panda Book Reward!
This book is thrilling, creepy, absolutely terrified; but there’s always something pushing you to read it…Also, DO NOT READ TAKE THIS BOOK AS BED READING!!! Or you would have nightmares.
A quick summary for this book (No spoiling):
The protagonist, Victoria, is a PERFECT student: she gets “A” for every subject; her golden curls needs to be done perfectly before she goes to school.
But since she met Lawrence, her life had changed. Lawrence is a boy who has totally different life style from Victoria: he doesn’t like to tuck his shirt in, he’s bad at every subject—except music, he loves playing piano (not Victoria & his parents though). Victoria decided to help him to be “perfect” as her.
To Victoria’s surprise, after two weeks, Lawrence disappeared; Victoria soon found out that there’s something unusual happening in this town… frightening faces, weird voices, and strange acts, what’s all that about?
Soon, Victoria found out, that Mrs. Cavendish is controlling the whole town—No one knows where is she from…Victoria began to explore the dark secrets of The Cavendish Home For Boys And Girls.
[NO MORE SPOILING! READ IT YOURSELF!]
So far, The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls is my favorite!
Hi Nevaeh,
This is a great review and it sounds like you really enjoyed the book – but bear in mind that this is one of the books from last year’s Panda Book award shortlist. You can find this year’s titles by following the links here.
Thank you Mr. Haysom 🙂 I will read the Panda Book award for this year and write more book reviews