Changes

One of the worst kind of nerve-wracking days has arrived: that first day of Secondary School. As we all remember, that's part scary, part exciting for any girl (or boy too, of course, but this is a girls' school). It's an age when you're anxious about making new friends and fitting in anyway, but at ''her'' new school twelve-year-old Marie falls victim to a group of bullies. They call themselves The Super Six which they think makes them look important. But Marie privately renames them The Stupid Six.

Marie is in huge emotional pain and begins cutting herself and having nightmares in which she hears the ghost of her dead baby sister crying. And she has absolutely no one to confide in. I felt really distraught for her. In fact I couldn't put the book down because I didn't want to leave her in the middle of her sadness and confusion. This torment is reality for bullied children who fear the repercussions of telling, or who think they can't speak up because they might sound silly or weak, or they can't burden parents with their problems because the parents are already struggling with other things. So it all becomes a heavy secret. This really comes across in the story and readers will get that sense of what it's like for Marie stuck in her bad situation.