My Name is Mina

By David Almond
My Name is Mina is the prequel to David Almond's Skellig. It is about Mina, and her writing in her journal, but she doesn't write boring things like what she did and when, she writes all kinds of things. The first thing she writes in her journal is My name is Mina and I love the night. The story is told from before Michael (from Skellig) comes into the story.

I thought this book was strange, not bad, but not really what I would normally read. Mina was a bit weird, and her mind sort of wandered all over the place. The way things were written were quite clever, and although some things were very strange I definitley learnt some new words such as archaeopteryx (a kind of dinosaur) and other things. Also, I think that some of the views she had about school (being a cage and teachers bla-bla-bla-ing) are views that many people would share with her, and there were aspects of that that I thought were very funny, especially when she back-chatted the teacher. I liked her poems, and I thought that the things she did at home as school 'lessons' were very interesting.

I thought that the chararcter Mina was very strange but I quite liked reading about her 'extraordinary activities' and how she solved questions she had in her mind. I also liked it when she saw and thought about the new neighbours and what it would be like if they lived there, and how those bits tied in with Skellig was good, as were all the other links in the story.

Overall, I thought this bok was ok, but Mina was very strange! Not really my kind of book.

By Emily B, Year 8