Key themes
- A wild childhood — and what civilisation asks a child to give up
- Two kinds of mother, two kinds of home
- Nature writing as a child's interior landscape
About this book
Ten-year-old October has spent her whole life living wild in the woods with her father — until an accident forces her to move to London to live with the mother she barely knows. Balen's Carnegie Medal-winning novel is about wildness, belonging and the different kinds of home a child can have, told in lyrical, nature-saturated prose.
Published in 2020, October October won the Carnegie Medal in 2022. Balen has described an interest in writing about children who exist outside conventional structures and what happens when they're brought into them.
Discussion questions
- October has grown up living wild with her father — no school, no electricity, deep knowledge of the woods. How does Balen develop this upbringing — as idyllic, as isolating, or as something the novel refuses to simplify into either?
- October's mother, who she barely knows, represents an entirely different way of living — London, school, structure. How does Balen develop October's relationship with this unfamiliar parent and world?
- The prose is highly lyrical, full of natural imagery. How does this style reflect October's way of perceiving the world — and what happens to this voice as she's forced into an unfamiliar environment?
- The novel doesn't present a simple resolution where one life is 'right' and the other 'wrong.' How does Balen handle the ending — what does October ultimately need, and does the novel allow for complexity in the answer?
- October October won the Carnegie Medal. What does it do that earns this recognition — and how does it use a child's intense relationship with the natural world to explore questions about belonging and home?
Get the book
Links open an Amazon search. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Read together or read next
Books that make a good pairing or natural follow-up.
Reading it with your group?
Get October October
As an Amazon Associate and Bookshop.org affiliate we earn from qualifying purchases.