It was 2018 when The End came. At least that’s what Dylan and his Mam, Rowenna call it now.
Dylan was six years old, and Rowenna twenty eight. Now eight years on, Dylan is much stronger, wiser and thinner than any fourteen year old should be, but keeping themselves alive after the bombs, ruled all and everything. Without electricity, a food supply, or even running water, life was hard and the survival learning curve steep.
There have been many challenges along the way, a little sister and sickness too. A busted ankle, promises and rules made and broken, and much learnt by trial and error. Things that meant nothing before The End mean so much more now.
Rowenna and Dylan have kept to themselves – not that there have been others to avoid. Not for a while anyway.
When Rowenna found a little blue notebook, she gave it to Dylan to write in. She has always encouraged his reading, and by taking as many books as she could carry from the library, he has become a more devoted reader than she. Dylan loves poetry and his Welsh language, but his Mam has left such things to him.
Dylan likes to write, Rowenna not so much – but they both vow to write in the Blue Book of Nebo named after the town they live in alone. Both vow not to read the other’s words, until at least they decide otherwise.
With only each other for company they rely on one another, but their strong bond has changed over the years. Rowenna has become more distant and somehow angry, and Dylan can’t understand why. As he grows up, he realises she has secrets from him, but he has his own.
They write in the little blue notebook, saying what they want to say to each other, but on the page. Will this be their lives forever? Will they ever share their secrets, worries or fears again?
Winner of the 2023 Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing, The Blue Book of Nebo is a post apocalypse novel set in Wales. Nuclear bombs have been dropped in major cities, wiping out much of the population and leaving a mother and son the only survivors in a small Welsh town.
This novel is written in a diary format between the two, moving forward and back in their individual stories and memories. Both voices share with the reader their secrets from each other, allowing us to see the major events over the past eight years. Dylan’s childhood has been molded by these events and achievements, along with his forays into his Welsh identity.
There is loss, grief, confusion, and pride in what they’ve achieved. They’ve put the clues together from horrors seen recently or shared years before, about what happened on that fateful day when their lives changed.
Not a long novel at only 146 pages, it certainly needs no more to be the multi award winner it has become. Cleverly written but succinct in its diary structure, The Blue Book of Nebo also won the 2018 Prose Medal at the National Eisteddfod and the 2019 Welsh Book of the Year Award, before being translated by the author herself from Welsh to English.
This is a novel to be read more than once, and although a portrayal of life after a disaster, it ends with hope for a mother and son and the future itself.
Author – Manon Stefan Ros
Age – 14+
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(2022, Wales, Welsh, Post Apocalypse. Nuclear Bombs, Fallout, Radiation, Alone, Family, Mother and Son, Before, After, The End, Hope, Survival, Multi Award Winner, National Eisteddfod, Secrets, Yoto Carnegie Medal 2023, Welsh Book of the Year Award, Poetry, Language, Reading, Books, Diary, Writing, Growing Up)