River Boy facts for kids
Front cover of a 2006 edition
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| Author | Tim Bowler |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Jason Friend |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Young-adult novel, supernatural fiction |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
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Publication date
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1997 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 135 pp (first edition) |
| ISBN | 978-0-19-271756-6 |
| OCLC | 787800429 |
River Boy is a young adult novel by Tim Bowler, published by Oxford in 1997. It is the story of a teenage girl facing the prospect of bereavement. Bowler won the annual Carnegie Medal, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. River Boy also won the 1999 Angus Book Award.
Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster) published the first U.S. edition in 2000.
Plot summary
Fifteen-year-old Jess, a dedicated swimmer, dotes on her grandfather, a fiercely independent and cantankerous artist. When he falls ill, he insists on returning to the isolated valley where he lived as a child to finish his last painting, a haunting landscape called 'River Boy'. Jess is desperately trying to cope with the knowledge that her grandfather is dying, but she does her best to help him finish the painting that is so important to him.
While exploring the valley, Jess feels a strange presence and sees a mysterious boy in the river, now there, now gone. When she eventually meets the boy, he gives her some surprising advice that leads to the painting being finished against everyone's expectations. In return, he challenges her to join him in swimming down the river from the source to the sea, over forty miles. Jess refuses, saying she must stay with her grandfather, and watches him dive from the waterfall into the river. Soon after, hearing about her grandfather as a boy, she has a sudden revelation, and she swims after the boy to the mouth of the river, where he is waiting for her before finally disappearing. Jess then learns that her grandfather has died peacefully, leaving her his painting of the 'River Boy', which she now realizes is both a landscape and a portrait of the boy she met – a self-portrait.
Characters
- Jessica (Jess), a fifteen-year-old dedicated swimmer
- Grandpa, an artist at the end of his life
- Dad, his son, Jess's father
- Mum, Jess's mother
- Alfred, a garrulous neighbour who knew "Grandpa" when he was young
- The river boy
