The Trouble With Goats and Sheep

Author/Guide: Joanna Cannon

Why a Booktrail?

1976 – Somewhere in the Midlands. On an avenue where curtains twitch and where secrets hide behind them…

ISBN: 978-0008132163
Genre: Fiction

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What you need to know before your trail

In a town in the East Midlands, on an ordinary non descript avenue, there are many secrets hiding behind the curtains of the houses there. A normal street from first sight but Mrs Creasy has disappeared and everyone is worried about where she could have gone, and which secrets she has taken with her.

Grace and Tilly are ten year old friends who want to try and help find her. They are told that God will look out for her and that he is everywhere so they decide to find God. He will know where Mrs Creasy has gone.

But as Grace and Tilly uncover the secrets of the street, they find a lot more than they bargained for.

Locations

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Travel Guide

Somewhere in the East Midlands might not at first seem to be a setting for the booktrail but then you would be mistaken. The setting here is one of a town in England in the mid 1970s where everyone knows your name, where writing your name in Angel Delight and Arctic Roll was the highlight of the week. The vicar of the local church is a well known figure who continues to amaze children such as Grace and Tilly with the statement that God is everywhere so they decide to sit at the front of the church so that he will be able to hear their prayers better. For the booktrail we’ve actually selected a small town in Derbyshire in the Peak District as this is where the author lives and works and there is great place that you can go to see sheep and goats!

An anonymous town but one so familiar in every sense of the word – there are goats and sheep here we are told, those who belong and those who don’t. Those you would cross the street to avoid, these loners, which begs the question from Grace that they wouldn’t feel alone if everyone wasn’t on the other side of the street. Childhood logic at its best.

The 1970s is evoked with warmth and a great deal of humour and familiarity – the TV is turned on to warm up, the excitement of writing your name in your bowl of Angel Delight, the fact that Mrs Morton never eats chocolate herself yet is always foisting Penguins and Clubs onto the local children, Space Hoppers, Dancing Queens and Soda Streams.

Take yourself back to a time where curtain twitching separated the goats and sheep and you were left wondering just who is on which side of the fence after all.

Booktrailer Review

Susan @thebooktrailer

How I laughed and how I cried at this novel! Joanna Cannon’s writing is lyrical and magical and she paints a heartwarming picture of life in England in the 1970s.

There are so many funny moments in this, wry observations and so many ‘I remember that’ moments. Now I’m not a child of the 70s but I do still remember a lot of the things mentioned in the novel – the Arctic Roll, the trouble with having to get comfy in church, the way you’d warm up the TV, find a soda stream the next big thing and an aunt who offered a feast of chocolate on every visit despite her saying she’d never eat them herself. The confusion and reasoning of two ten year old girls is spot on.

The story is one I can’t write much about as this is a gem to savour, to gasp at, to laugh at, to wipe away tears before it gets too much and sit thinking behind your own net curtains when it does. We all have goats and sheep in our midst but it’s how we live side by side that matters. The goats v sheep theme is one which got me thinking and ten year olds have a good way of explaining things that adults cannot.

This is a gem of a debut and one which takes you back to the day when life was different yet the same.

Can I just say as well – towards the end the girls make a discovery and there is a headline in the local paper which just floored me! Joanna Cannon you are one funny lady.