Changes

|title=Crow Boy

|sort=Crow Boy

|borrow=Yes

|isbn=9781905916559

|pages=218

|publisher=Fledgling Press

|date=November 2012

|video=jVtGIrOYji0

|summary=Tom is on a school trip to a seventeenth century street in Edinburgh when he finds himself transported back in time—to the very moment when bubonic plague is spreading through the city. Worse still, he is forced to work for the plague doctor. The question is, can he survive long enough to find a way home?

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Life is tough for Tom Afflick. He's the new boy at school — never a happy situation — and some of his classmates take every opportunity to bully him. They laugh at his accent, and once they find out his mum ran away from her English husband and is now living with the unlovely Hamish, then things go from bad to worse. He misses his friends back in Manchester, and his dad seems to be making barely any effort whatsoever to contact him. Then he makes a huge mistake: on the school trip to Mary King's Close (a real place, by the way, which you can visit next time you're in Edinburgh) he reveals that he already knows a lot about the beginnings of the plague because his class had already studied it, back in his old school. His fate is sealed, and number-one bully Gillies promises to thump him as soon as the teacher is out of sight.

The book is both intriguing and thrilling. Tom is first made to earn his keep by feeding the pigs, he is treated less kindly than an animal by the sinister doctor, and at one moment he even has to flee for his life across the rooftops, but there is still time for kindness, loyalty and friendship. Tom even begins to learn a little compassion for the people who commit crimes simply because they would otherwise starve. It is a rich, satisfying book, with lots of layers and plenty to think and talk about, and it deserves to be as popular with readers as Mr Caveney's other excellent books.

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