Sheep on the Fourth Floor
By (Author) Leonie Thorpe
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand)
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand)
13th May 2010
New Zealand
Children
Fiction
823.3
Short-listed for LIANZA Children's Book Awards: Esther Glen Medal for Junior Fiction 2011
Paperback
210
Width 130mm, Height 200mm, Spine 12mm
242g
Anna is the well behaved and obedient child of professional parents. Her mother Penelope is a leading research scientist and her father a doctor - and she's been raised in a politically correct nonsmoking vegetarian home, with a solid foundation of firmly held beliefs she has inherited from her parents.However, Anna is shaken to the core when she organizes a school trip to her mother's work and discovers that she experiments on live animals. A sheep is being held on the fourth floor away from all the things that make life good for a sheep - and he will be killed and dissected when the experiment is finished. Horrified with what she now knows, she is further rocked to discover that her father is a secret smoker - despite lecturing his patients on the evils of smoking. What follows is her way of dealing with her own moral dilemma - exciting, funny, poignant and probably illegal. A contempory novel for 9-12 year olds.
Leonie Thorpe wrote the Archies series and the critically acclaimed Sheep on the Fourth Floor. Here she moves into the YA level with panache.