Gleitzman and Jennings’s ‘Deadly Part 1’ is an unexpectedly humorous and horrifyingly wicked story about an adventure where the characters uncover a deadly secret one after the other. I thought that this book would challenge me as I am not used to reading text that are eerie and intimidating. The book/series ‘Deadly’ has two main characters, Gleitzman narrates Amy's story and Jennings narrates Sprocket's, with each of them contributing to alternate chapters. …show more content…
I thought this would challenge me as I am not used to reading text where the protagonist is a girl or the text is from a girl’s perspective but it was surprisingly easier to understand compared to ‘Deadly’. The book was more interesting than challenging as the book is about a determined, stubborn, arrogant girl named Alanna of Trebond who knows she’ll have to masquerade as a boy for eight years till she becomes a knight. Alanna had numerous close calls, almost being caught as a girl and each chapter always ends in a cliff hanger making me want to continue …show more content…
Ultimately, she accepts who she is. The challenging part in the text was having a girl’s perspective of everything throughout the whole book, having to read through these awkward moments and problems a girl would have. “Suddenly she froze before her long mirror. Watching the glass closely, she bounced up and down. Her chest moved. It wasn't much, but she had definitely jiggled.” This line is one of many awkward moments where Alanna had difficulties disguising herself as a flat chested boy, so she was forced to bind her chest to hide her developing female physique. This book challenged me for this reason.
In Pierce’s ‘Alanna the first Adventure’, some of the content in the book made it feel uncomfortable to continue reading. However, it was Jennings and Gleitzman’s ‘Deadly’, that was more difficult to read as the abundance of characters and parallel plot made it difficult to follow and enjoy. Despite being challenged I have learnt that horrifying books are not as eerie as the movies and that text narrating a girl’s perspective on a story are not too