Away With Words is a
Brilliant and beautiful middle grade novel
About communication and friendship
In a world where words physically appear as we speak

This is such a fascinating concept
And has given me a lot to think about
What would my words look like if they could be seen?
What colours would they be?
What shape and size?
Would I be more careful with my words
If they could be seen?
If they could be collected?

Away With Words is the story of Gala
Who moves from Spain to Scotland
With her dad
To live with his boyfriend, Ryan
They want to build a new life together
Be a family

The move is not easy for Gala
She feels lost and alone and homesick
She has left behind her school
Her friends, her home

Gala knows a little English
But her native language is Catalan
Not Spanish as most assume
Much gets lost in translation
Gala’s struggle to understand English
And her journey with language learning
Is very cleverly visually woven
Through the design of the book

Gala is miserable
Until she meets Natalie
A girl with selective mutism
The two girls bond over their
Struggle to fit in and communicate
With their peers

The girls share a love of words
They both have a lot to say
But they do not find it easy
To say it
For their own reasons
They find it hard to be themselves
In school

We learn a lot about Gala
Through the comparisons
Of life in Spain and Scotland

Natalie is a wordsearcher
This fascinates Gala
Natalie collects other people’s words
She creates poetry with them
She curates a book of her
Baby sister’s actual first words
She collects them as they are spoken

The two girls have found friendship in one another
The two friends
Find communicating hard
Both feel that they do not fit in
Until they find one another
And know that they belong
As they help one another to feel heard
To be heard

With one another
They have found their place

This story shines a light
On dealing with change
On the difficulties of fitting in
Of learning to live somewhere new
While missing home

Natalie helps Gala with her word collection
She writes a poem
About home

“Home is a treasure that can never be buried
A ship that can never be sunk
Pieces of gold, parts of the past
Away with maps – there’s a compass in your heart”

Natalie’s poem is made with
Recycled words
Rescued words
Words that would otherwise disappear

The girls realise that
Using words to make a friend feel better
Is a special thing
They decide to use the words
They have collected
For good

One poem of support and kindness
Leads to another
And others
Spreading smiles of joy
Through wonderful words
Collected from the voices of others
The girls wonder
Who else might need a little bit of hope?

One of the girls’ letters
Falls into the hands of the class bully
Gala wonders if something happened to him
To make him be so horrible to others
Did he need a little bit of hope?

Soon a different kind of poem is written
Who has twisted such a kind idea
Into something mean and horrid?

Away With Words is a
Powerful and clever illustration
Of the good that can come from our words
And how quickly and easily
Words can be twisted to cause harm

Gala and Natalie blamed for the mystery messages
The bullying poems
Someone seems to be trying to get the girls into trouble
But who and why?

When Gala’s grandmother visits
Gala sees that she has settled into her new home
And her new school
Without really realising
Because of Natalie and
Eilidh O
She has found a rhythm that works
In her new school
Her new home
Her new family

Gala comes to understand
That the move has been hard to navigate
For her father as well as for her

The love between Gala, her papa and her Iaia is beautifully written
I love the relationship between Gala and Ryan too
I adore Iaia, the wise and mischievous grandma
Their family dynamics show
The ups and downs of life
How we all cope differently with big changes
As a family unit they show
The importance of talking to one another
Of sharing how we feel as things change
It also shows the importance of
Making time to be together
To laugh together

Gala’s story is one of belonging
Of settling, blooming and belonging

This is a story about finding your place in the world
Of what home means
What makes our home our home

It is a story of family and friendship
Of dealing with change

A story about the importance of communication
The power of words
The wonder of language

This is a story of love and courage
Of how things can get lost in translation
Even when people are speaking the same language

A story of resilience
Of accepting and celebrating difference
Of being true to you and
Standing up for yourself and others

This is a story that reminds us of
The importance of kindness
We do not always know
What people have going on in their lives
There are almost always things we do not see
We should always be kind to everyone

Away With Words is a
Story that shows us the power of stories
To help us understand one another
And glimpse the world through someone else’s eyes
This story shows the power of stories as a tool for building empathy

Gala does not want to lose the new friends she has made
And so she stands up to the class bully
To try and find out who has been sending the mystery messages
How will Gala and Natalie clear their names?
How will their words become their way to the world?

I was in floods of tears at the end of this book
Tears of happiness and of pride
For two fictional girls who have come to mean so much to me
There is so much in this book to explore with young readers
So much in this story to enjoy sharing with young people
A truly brilliant and beautiful middle grade novel
And one I cannot wait to read again with my children

There are so many creative ways to explore this story
We will definitely be

Creating haikus and other poems using found words

Mixing up a whole spectrum of emotion colours in art

Making word collages, collecting words from newspapers and magazines

Thinking of wonderful descriptions for colours and words
“The colour of toasted sugar”
“Strawberry coloured love”
“Sherbert orange words”
“A fern-green understand”
“The colour of milky tea”

Creating word art thinking about what shape, size and colour different words might be

Starting our own family dictionary of words we collect from the world around us that we love

A truly inspiring story
And one that will stay with me
For a long long time to come
I now cannot wait to read
Sophie Cameron’s other books
She definitely has a way with words!

Do follow the Blog Tour
With Little Tiger
To find out more about
Gala and Natalie
And this brilliant and beautiful book