Paper Cup

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This includes questions you can ask your children to encourage them to think in more depth about how they’ll plan to win the challenge.

As the book progresses, we learn that Kelly had a childhood companion, Mands, and that something terrible happened to her for which Kelly felt responsible. Certain sections of this book were quite traumatic to read and something that happens early on really impacted me as someone who knows and loves Glasgow. In high sprits, the girls “take pity” on the tramp lying there, and gift her the coins they’d collected for strangers to kiss the bride to be. She, however, is only the occasion for the story which belongs to a homeless woman, Kelly, along the bench from her.The freezing doorways, dirty skips and uncaring streets of Glasgow are where Kelly sleeps and lives, trying and often failing to stay off the drink. Who studied architecture and engineering at University, and who through a few poor choices, lousy men, the pull of drink and drugs, becomes irrevocably lost.

Kelly’s story is gently teased out to the reader in small increments, through past drunken stories, childhood memories, and the experiences which led her to where she is today.Paper cups are a really versatile material that often prove to be a staple with different sorts of activities for children, particularly crafts. This is therefore a novel in a classic tradition like Fielding’s Tom Jones or Stevenson’s Kidnapped, no matter how different in in mood and setting. I love the way the book is set out so that we learn small parts of Kelly’s life and past as we go through. The novel sees Kelly walk from Portpatrick to Glenluce to Whithorn, on the pilgrim trail, en route to destiny. It’s one of those stories that feels like it should be compulsory reading, to give people who have been unaffected by homelessness a reality check of what it’s like to live on the streets.