Smoking: Several people smoke, including Link, in an effort to curb their hunger. Since the book is British, the word fag is often used for the word cigarette. No, I have not really enjoyed reading Robert Swindells' 1993 and Carnegie Medal winning young adult novel Stone Cold all that much. It is textually majorly depressing and often really quite emotionally infuriating even if indeed Stone Cold is brilliantly penned, with Swindells deftly and ingeniously providing points of view from two very different and mostly majorly unreliable narrators (protagonist Link and antagonist Shelter), and for me, not at all pleasurable and comfortable reading by any stretch of the imagination. However, and the above having been said, I also do not think that the author in any manner expects and even wants us as readers to find Stone Cold a reading joy, that instead, Robert Swindells' presented text for Stone Cold is meant to make us squirm, is supposed to render us uncomfortable, angry and to also make us think, with yes, Shelter's musings about killing and why he wants to rid the streets of London of the homeless feeling by necessity horrifying and terrible (and in particular so since one kind of knows that there are in fact many people, including police officers, politicians etc. who pretty much have similar attitudes to Shelter even if they do not abduct and murder the homeless, even if they do not actually put what Shelter is depicted as doing in Stone Cold into practice, and not to mention that after the police finally manage to arrest Shelter and incarcerate him, Link realises that while in jail, psychotic killer and all-round lowlife Shelter will actually have a roof over his head and three meals a day, but the homeless will still be out in the cold, despised, forgotten and desperately fighting to survive).

Robert Swindells - Wikipedia

Link is seventeen when he leaves home in the north of England for London, to escape family issues. He can’t find work and is soon homeless. He meets up with Ginger and makes a friend, but then Ginger disappears. Swindells won the annual Carnegie Medal recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. [1] Television [ edit ]Shelter: Shelter is a 47-year-old man who has retired from army. He is a psychopath serial killer, prowling the streets of London on a mission to rid the city of “dossers,” as he calls them. He talks about street kids and kills many of them, because he hates them “I can clean up the garbage, can’t I? They can’t stop me doing that and I will, by golly I will.” As you can see by the way he talks, he seems dangerous. He is actually making an army of ‘dead people.’ He acts soft from outside that you can’t even think of such a guy can commit a murder. He thinks that he is doing a good job by killing homeless people. He thinks he is an intelligent serial killer as he goes on a killing spree without being caught. He is really confident, or should I say over confident about no one catching him. He persuades people on the street (homeless) to come to his house for free food and a warm bed and when they come he kills them. He keeps the ‘dead people’ army under his floorboard. He buys them shoes and cut their hairs. I dislike this character because of his cruelty to towards homeless people. If u would read this book you will start to make an extremely bad image of shelter in your mind.

Stone Cold | Chapter summaries - Prime Study Guides Stone Cold | Chapter summaries - Prime Study Guides

Robert Swindells lives on the Yorkshire moors and is a full-time writer. He has won the Children's Book Award twice, for BROTHER IN THE LAND and for ROOM 13. In 1994, he won the Carnegie Medal for STONE COLD, and also the Sheffield Book Award. Shelter is getting used to his new name and enjoys the anticipation of starting his plan involving homeless people. Gail: Gail is the girl who Link later on falls in love with. She is from Glasgow. She left home because of her stepfather; this was also a common link between them. When Link and Gail met he was making up his mind to stay on his own after Ginger disappeared. But soon she created a place in Link’s ongoing life. Link thinks that Gail is not what she looks from outside but still he ignores it and falls in love with her. Gail had a supporting role in the book. I liked the way this character came into Link’s life. Gail at the end tells Link that she is not what she posed. She tells that she is a journalist and was doing a research on the life of homeless people and then she left him. Gail seems selfish at this point, but I guess that is how life goes on. At this stage you develop more sympathy towards Link.Stone Cold is a Carnegie Medal-winning thriller by Robert Swindells. It is one of The Originals from Penguin - iconic, outspoken, first. Overall I think that this novel is very good and I would recommend it to fans of realistic horror novels but I think most people would enjoy because of the various theme that it uses. It is definitely a novel aimed at the older reader as the ideas in the novel can be a bit heavy going and may scare younger readers. I would rate this novel a 3 out of 5. Cold (Heinemann, 1993), which dealt with homelessness, he won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognizing the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject. [1] Biography [ edit ] Bradford City Council Worth Valley By-election results" (PDF). Bradford City Council. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 April 2012.

Stone Cold by Robert Swindells | Goodreads

I think the book would equally appeal to boys and girls because of Link and Gail. I would give this book five star rating because it is full of emotions and tells you about the life of homeless people on one hand and brings out the ugly face of our society in which a husband betrays his wife, who in turn betrays her children by bringing in a boyfriend rather than devoting her life to her children. This sad story of Link highlights the tragedy, which the children of broken families had to face in our society. I thought this book was brilliant!! I really enjoyed reading it. I think this was the best book I have read so far, and gives me more reason to read more books. You can make your own image about it, and that makes the book as well as it is. He first won the Red House Children's Book Award with Brother in the Land (1984), a novel set in a post-apocalyptic world. Swindells was a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and is quoted as saying that the work "... came out of my own anger and frustration ... you can't kill selectively with nuclear weapons, you wipe out millions of people ...". He won three more Red House awards for Room (13), Nightmare Stairs (Short novel, 1998) and Blitzed (Younger readers, 2003). Ginger also shows Link the basics to being on the streets, like the best places to beg and good places to eat. We meet Gail further on in the book, after losing Ginger. As Link is sitting in a cafe, he sees ‘the best looking dosser’ he’s ever seen. Gail is Scottish and not just a dosser. She’s actually a reporter looking for a story on what it’s like to be homeless. Gail came over to sit next to Link, every eye in the place following her. He describes how he feels as Gail sits next to him. “I was acting so cool it was unbelievable but that’s all it was – acting.There were many themes that ran throughout the novel which meant that the actual plot wasn’t boring. The theme of loss is shown when Link leaves his house and loses basically everything and is forced onto the street. Adventure and courage are both shown when Link is on the street and has to stand up for himself and only survives on what he gets from begging. Even love is shown in the novel when Link meets a beautiful lady named Gail who he instantly falls in love with after seeing her. Find sources: "Robert Swindells"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( October 2015) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Vince leers at Mum, making suggestive comments about going to bed and rounding out a decent night. He nudges and winks at Link, trying to get a reaction. Link notes that he never remembers his own father talking about sex or even hinting at it. Link says that something happened between his sister, Carole, and Vince one night when Mum was working late. He never knew the full details, but he had a pretty good idea about what it could have been. Afterward, Mum and Carole fought, and Carole moved in with her boyfriend. Robert Swindells was born in Bradford in 1939, the eldest of five children. He left the local Secondary Modern School at fifteen to work as a copy holder on the local newspaper. At seventeen he enlisted in the RAF and served for three years, two in Germany. On being discharged he worked as a clerk, engineer and printer until 1969 when he entered college to train as a teacher having obtained five 'O' levels at night-school. His first book ' When Darkness Comes' was written as a college thesis and published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1972. In 1980 he gave up teaching to write full time. He likes travelling and visits many schools each year, talking and reading stories to children. He is the secutatry of his local Peace Movement group. Brother in the Land is his first book for Oxford University Press. He is married with two grown-up daughters and lives in Bradford.