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|title=Heaven Eyes

|author=David Almond

|buy=Yes

|borrow=Yes

|pages=224

|publisher=Signature

|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340743689</amazonuk>

|amazonus=<amazonus>0340743689</amazonus>

|website=http://www.davidalmond.com/

}}

Erin and her friends January and Mouse live with other children at Whitegates. It's a children's home run by Maureen, who is full of sympathy for her damaged children. To them though, it's not a welcome sympathy for they can see, far more clearly than Maureen, that her sympathy springs from her own 'damage' and it's as much sympathy for herself as for any of them. Erin's mother died; she never had a father, January's mother abandoned him at birth, and Mouse's father abandoned him too, leaving him outside the gates of the home with the words 'PLEASE LOOK AFTER ME' crudely tattooed on his arm. "He loved me," said Mouse. "He must have." Agonising, isn't it? January is convinced that one day his mother will return for him and Erin sometimes steals away to her room, puts on her mother's lipstick and perfume and lies on her bed trying to conjour up the image of her loved parent. It's her ritual and her comfort and it's heart-piercingly sad.

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