Teach Secondary - Issue 13.2

OutstandingSchool Leadership (PeterHughes,Bloomsbury,£19.99) For those unfamiliar with Hughes’ credentials, he’s the current CEO of the Hackney-basedMossbourne Federation, having worked as amaths teacher earlier in his career.As a writer,Hughes is nothing if not honest – extremely forthcoming with regards to what he perceives as his own personal and professional foibles, and even opens up the floor to include passages written by his workplace colleagues. While the book hits some of the bases you’d expect – the school mission, teaching and learning and relationships all receive dedicated chapters – its substance draws heavily on Hughes’ own biographical background and experiences. Born inAustralia, and having experienced a challenging itinerant childhood that he describes with a disarming frankness,Hughes’ personal history is perhapsmore eventful thanmost. Crucially, however, he uses those tales and anecdotes to illuminate compelling parallels and contrasts between then and now.Authorities in New SouthWales allowed teaching professionals to take 12-month sabbaticals for pursuing new opportunities elsewhere –maybe there’s something to be said for such a system? His account of relocating to the UK is a springboard for a thoughtful discussion of attitudes towards forward planning andmanaging risk.It all adds up to a ‘leadership guide’ that grapples with big questions and big challenges (Ofsted, behaviour, social justice) in an admirably novel and eminently readable way. Read our extended interviewwithPeterHughesvia bit.ly/ts132-OTS Your latest book returns to the characters and setting of TheAgency forScandal – is it a standalone sequel, or nowpart of an ongoing series? When I conceived of the first book, I didn’t approach it as a series – I was just really excited about the idea.Once I started writing it, it became one of the nicest first drafts I’ve done, as all these characters felt really‘there’ fromthe start, and I could immediately see a thousand different offshoots. Having not planned it as a series, it feels like there’s now enough organically generatedmaterial to turn it into one. Your earlierYAnovels tookplace in the 1920s and 1930s,but the Scandal series is set inVictorian England –what drewyou to that particularperiod? It’s an era I find fascinating, and really interesting to explore inYAfiction. I’ve been thinking a lot about how themoment we’re living in now – a time of profoundly accelerated change, in all areas of our lives – is almost amirror of the Victorian period. Young people inVictorian Englandwere similarlywitnessing dramatic transformations, for which they had barely had any frame of reference. We often conceive of the Victorian era as being quite traditional,when it was actually a time of almost frightening revolution and change,which seems like something that today’s teens could really relate to. Howdidyourprior studies and research around the novel informyourportrayal of the book’s narrator,Mari? If you’re writing historical fiction about women and the world those women occupy, it’s important to look at the historical context. The reality for women of that period, in terms of the legal structure,was shocking. In the grand scheme of things, the 1850s reallyweren’t that long ago – and yet women weren’t legally considered to be individual human beings. Knowing howbad things were helps us better understand the world and situation we’re in now, andwhy. That said, I’malso interested in how that human experience of being a teenager is very timeless, in some ways. It’s something that anchors the writing of these books – they’re historical fiction, but because they portray 17- and 18-year-olds, there’s a focus on that moment when you’re on the cusp of adulthood andwhat it means. When you read 19th century diary entries and letters written by teenagers, it’s funny how tonally familiar and relatable the content is to what teenagers think about and experience for themselves today. ON THE RADAR Meet the author LAURA WOOD SpencerEdwards: EmperoroftheGalaxy (AlexPrior,TroubadorPublishing,£9.99) WhenThe Galactic Council of Inhabited Worlds is unable to appoint a newGalactic Emperor thanks tomanoeuvrings by the warlike Zylaxxians, they resort to selecting a randomsentient being via hyper-advanced AI.One problem– the chosen subject is 14-year-old Earthbound human Spencer Edwards,whose biggest concern right now is an impending date withAmyHeartly he really doesn’t want tomess up…Prior is fairly well-travelled himself (if not quite at interplanetary scale), having previously been a director based at Elstree Studios, a university lecturer and latterly a school headteacher. Different elements of that varied career would seemto have fed in to this book,which juxtaposes widescreen, cinematic world- building with the nicely-drawn quotidian life of our likeable, yet defiantly average protagonist.There’s humour in its telling, but as a YAnovel, it’smore enjoyable space romp than Hitchhiker’s -eque absurdism. ASeasonforScandal (LauraWood,Scholastic,£8.99) InWood’s previous historical YAnovel, The Agency for Scandal , readers were introduced toTheAviary – a clandestine, all-female organisation established in the late 19th centurywith the purpose of blackmailingmen on behalf of women wronged by thosemen. In this follow-up (though familiaritywith the earlier title isn’t required) wemeet Mari – a young woman overseeing her family’s florist business. When her home and livelihood becomes threatened by a corrupt landlord, she turns toTheAviary for help – only to find herself subsequently joining its ranks and embarking on a wild and unpredictable assignment of her own.Amid the sweeping plot and breezy prose of ASeason for Scandal ,Wood gives us a feisty, free- spirited protagonist we want to root for, a compelling cast of supporting characters, and a page-turning adventure that deftly balances period detail with narrative events that speak tomodern concerns. 45 teachwire.net/secondary B O O K R E V I E WS