This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

Read this book so long ago and unfortunately didn’t post my review in time! Review to come, apologies for the delay

It starts out happily enough with the birth of Jake, but it doesn't take long for things to go terribly wrong. Separated because it's easier to place a white baby than it is to place an eight year old biracial - half white, half black boy . As adults we know that life isn't fair, but how do you explain to an eight year old boy, who has been abandoned by his father, endured what no child should endure with his mother's mental illness and drug addiction why he can't go with his baby brother to be adopted ?

Maureen, a foster care giver , who takes Leon in, is a favorite character who genuinely cares about what happens to him and the impact of his separation from his mother and brother have on him . When she becomes ill , her sister Sylvia cares for Leon. Time passes and Leon turns ten with no clear plans for his future on the part of Social Services. Leon , on the other hand is very clear about what he wants to do . He will find his brother and his mother and take care of them both. He finds his way to the "allotments", learns to plant a garden and makes friends with Devlin , a former IRA member and Tufty, a West Indian man and activist and things go terribly wrong again as Leon finds himself in the middle of race riots.

This is a commentary on a number of issues : the racism and the riots in Britain in the 1980's , the short comings of the child welfare system, but at its heart it is the sad story of a boy who will steal your heart . The reader shouldn't let the simple language and style and the fact that it reads quickly fool them into thinking that this is not a story of substance . Kit de Waal , describes in an interview which appears at the end of the book "The most challenging aspect was thinking all the time about what is important to a child versus what we as adults notice. .....I tried to simplify the language of the book as much as possible."

The author has intimate knowledge of the story she tells. She's mixed race herself, has two adopted children of mixed race , and has worked in the foster care system for a number of years . I highly recommend this book which most of the time time is heartbreaking, but yet offers us some hope for a little boy named Leon. I can't imagine anyone reading this book and not falling in love with him.

I just thought it was rather mediocre. It felt a little contrived, and not particularly interesting.

'My Name is Leon' is one of those books that once read, are never forgotten. It is a beautifully written book which is all about Leon, an nine year old boy who, along with his baby brother, is fostered out, after his mum has an emotional breakdown. Leon has always been the main carer for his brother, and when Social Services decide that it is better for the brothers to be separated, finds it difficult to accept that he is a boy who should be looked after himself. The book is a great insight into the mind of a young boy who looses everything important to him, including his prized possessions of the Action Man figures he received as a present, his young brother and his mother who, although he should of felt resentment towards her for not looking after them both, was worried about her. It is also a great piece of social history, with the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, the riots and also the issues of being an Afro-Carribean person living in Great Britain during the time.
The story is told by nine year old Leon and his childish view of the world is a very clever way to tell this story. The things that are important to Leon, his Action Men figures, Curly Wurlys, the one photograph of his young brother are throughout the story and added to the freedom Leon has through the bike his Social Worker gifts to Leon all give a small insight to how Leon is feeling and what he feels unable to express through his conversations with others.

This is a relatively short book, however it is a very thought provoking story which I am sure would be perfect as a book group read. There are many issues and themes which lend themselves to in depth conversations between fellow readers. The book also gives an insight into the fostering and adoption process and gave me much to think about in relation to the issues concerning this.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants a book that stays with them long after they have read the last paragraph, however I do recommend that you have some tissues to hand as there are a few heart breaking moments within the book.

Kit De Waal, the author is taking part in the Unbroken Voices panel event at Chipping Norton Literary Festival on Saturday 29th April 2017. I usually attend this festival and was looking forward to meeting Kit, but am now unable to visit the festival. I hope some of my blog visitors can make the festival - it is a great weekend.

Thank you to the publishers, Penguin, for sending me the book to review and for inviting me to take part in the blog tour to celebrate the paperback publication of My Name is Leon.

This book is sensitive, raw, poignant and completely absorbing. I’d recommend this to anybody, but particularly for those who enjoyed The Shock of the Fall.

Nine-year-old Leon and his brother, Jake, are placed in foster care when their mother is no longer able to look after them. Jake is a baby making the adoption process easier. Jake is also white, while Leon is mixed race and this is 1980s Britain. Leon desperately wants to be reunited with Jake, but he doesn’t know how to begin looking for him.

My Name Is Leon* is a heartbreaking story about love, loss, identity, race and what makes a family. Keep the tissues handy, there will be tears on multiple occasions.

Understated yet moving account of a young boy's attempt to keep his family together. Well-written, utterly believable and heartbreaking.

What was this about? Because I had a hard time not being bored. It was too slowpaced for me to enjoy,but I really like the characters. Since I'm a plot oriented person, that just wasn't enough for me, I wanted more things to happen

This is a heart rending book. It was so beautifully written but so painful. I really felt the anguish of the main character and the sadness and despair of those connected with him. At times I had to stop reading, I was so affected by it. It felt more like a memoir than a novel as it felt so real and true. Sadly I'm sure it is all too true to life for too many people. I would heartily recommend it despite the sad subject matter.

Leon, a nine-year-old black boy, is separated from his white baby brother when they’re both taken into care. This little gem of a story follows Leon’s journey as he navigates the care system while processing the loss of his mother and brother. I was concerned that this would be excruciatingly difficult to read because of its subject matter, but it’s not. It walks just the right line between sweet and sad, and somehow holds the tension throughout.

It deals sensitively with race issues and the search for appropriate versus dangerous parent-figures without preachiness. Most of all, I was carried along by the story and strong writing voice, and gobbled it up in three days. The character of Leon has stayed with me – a sign of a great novel. Warning: can make you want to sign up as a foster carer. Highly recommended.

Leon is nine, but looks much older. He does his best to care for his mother and baby brother, Jake, but his mother’s mental health deteriorates to such an extent that social workers intervene. As a result, Leon is fostered and, to Leon’s intense anguish, Jake is adopted. Moving but not sentimental, this book brought to mind Bernard Ashley’s The Trouble with Donovan Croft, a wonderful children’s book I read a long time ago. Kit de Waal writes with similar simplicity and authenticity. She inhabits Leon’s mind and body beautifully – his perceptions of other people, his joy at riding his bike – and, although she doesn’t flinch from the harshness of his situation, her touch is always deft. Set in the early 1980s, against a background of racial tension and the royal wedding, this is a relevant, poignant and rewarding novel.

I was really taken by 'My Name is Leon', despite the fact that it is not normally the sort of book I would consider. It is a cleverly written novel in third person but through the eyes of a young boy, Leon, whose life we follow from the trials and deprivations of his first family through the turmoil of fostering and interventions by Social Services. The situation is heart=wrenching and angry, but is beautifully plotted from the boy's largely unsentimental perspective, that we understand both his bewilderment and pain, but also can divine the workings of the adult system that seems unable to calm or reassure him. It manages to be depressing, frustrating, affecting and ultimately uplifting in equal measure, and I highly recommend giving it a chance, as I did. I suspect you will not be able to leave it till the very end.

This book, through all the ups and downs that Leon is put through, is so full of heart. Leon's voice feels so authentic and you can't help but feel for him and the entire cast of characters who are all so well fleshed-out. Kit de Waal weaves in the little intricacies of everyday life and feelings and responses so well. I was very impressed with the way she brings mundane everyday happenings to life and builds things up to a worrying but entirely believable climax. I've already recommended this book to several friends.

I found this to be an unexpectedly tender and beautiful book. It really has one boy's story at its heart, but touched on so many more issues (racism and prejudice, police brutality being the most obvious) than I had anticipated.

Leon is a child who valiantly tries to care for his baby brother and mother, before eventually entering the foster care system, so this isn't an easy read. De Waal creates Leon's voice so skilfully, showing the pathos of his situation without ever descending into mawkishness.

This was a fantastic read, which was genuinely unputdownable, and I'll be recommending it to my book group and students.

Interesting that this was told from a child's point of view, that had me wondering why it was sold as such. But it works fine as an adult book. Leon is a lovable character and so are the people around him who try to help with his not very easy life. It's sad and uplifting, against the backdrop of the 1980's Brixton riots.

This was a lovely book. It also truly resonated with me personally as my own baby sister was born in 1981 and although our parentage was infinitely more conventional and stable than that of Leon and baby Jake, I remember when I first became aware of the need to protect and nurture her. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to endure what Leon did!

I was very impressed with the subtle and nuanced approach to the blatant racism of the period. Leaving two brothers separated, one heart broken and (arguably) six lives changed irrevocably the damage is mirrored graphically by the unrest that seemed to explode in London in the early eighties.

Seen through the prism of a child’s eyes, prejudice is played out before Leon whilst his own life is turned upside down and his grief and frustration at the adults he is meant to trust, is juxtaposed against some of the biggest events of the year. The petty squabbles and empty posturing in the group of outsiders he meets at the municipal allotments are in contrast with the volatility of The Brixton riots, erupting between dissatisfied Black men who felt marginalised and the police . These clashes are spectres in the periphery of the main plot and eventually these skirmishes become integral to the final explosive release of Leon’s pent up aggression and frustration born of the inertia of officialdom to give him peace and serenity.

Even that infamous fairytale Royal wedding becomes part of Leon ‘s tumultuous journey of adjustment through abandonment, loss , resentment and eventually acceptance.

I felt a mixture pity and pride for little Leon, who was forced to be a man too often when what he truly needed was to be was a little boy. I wish he had been able to enjoy being a big brother, to get to know Jake and feel the unconditional love of a mother. He was a little scrapper, and even when he is being bad, there is a inherent goodness in him that brought a lump to my throat often.

Kit De Waal cleverly weaves in so many references that any child of the eighties will secretly thrill at, Star Wars, Action man and BMX all give this heartfelt story a grounding in the decade that shaped me, but this is a book that anyone can enjoy. The characterisation is brilliant in my humble opinion.

There are no real villains in this piece, every single one of the people who come into Leon’s sphere have difficulties, and troubles. All are trying their best to make the most of a bad situation. The social Services are depicted sympathetically and the Foster Care system gets a generous boost from the positive way that Leon’s awful situation is made better by kind, down to earth people.

I did not want to stop reading the book and I was awfully sad to see it end. When you miss characters when you have read the last few pages of a book, you know it is a great book. This story made me angry, sad and nostalgic and I absolutely loved

I knew I was going to love this book as soon as I read the blurb.

This is a story of a nine year old Leon, Leon and his brother Jake are taken away from their mother and put into foster care when she becomes unable to care for them, Leon and Jake go to live with a wonderful lady called Maureen who he builds up such a lovely bond with, Leon has to come to terms with the fact that his brother Jake has been adopted and Leon has not and the reason for this is 1, Jake is a baby and 2, Jake is white and Leon is not.

This was such a heartbreaking story, I really felt Leon's pain when he was longing to be with his mother and Jake, then when he finally finds somewhere he belongs it all goes wrong and poor Leon is uprooted and has to resettle. I felt so much emotion throughout this book and wanted what was best for Leon, it also really question the benefit of splitting up siblings during the adoption process and as someone who wants to adopt it really made me think, it also opened my eyes to the racism faced towards the ethnic minority's in the 1970's/1980's and some of the things that went on shocked me to the core.

This is not only a powerful and though provoking story, it is always brilliantly written and I would urge absolutely everybody to pick up this book!!

Prior to reading My Name is Leon I had read two books that had left me feeling disappointed so I was very pleased when I realised this was a book to love. This review contains some spoilers but nothing major.
This book is narrated from the point of view of a young boy named Leon and begins with him meeting his baby brother Jake in hospital. “No one has to tell Leon that this is a special moment. Everything else in the hospital seems to have gone quiet and disappeared. The nurse makes him wash his hands and sit up straight. ‘Careful now,’ she says. ‘He’s very precious.’ But Leon already knows.”
“The baby has the smallest fingers Leon has ever seen. He looks like a doll with its eyes closed. He has silly white hair on the very top of his head and a tiny pair of lips that keep opening and closing. Through the holey blanket, Leon can feel baby warmth on his belly and his legs and then the baby begins to wriggle.”
Leon is very mature about the arrival of his little brother and feels a connection with him from the beginning, talking to him about their mother Carol. He tells Jake he can’t tell him about his father because he doesn’t know who he is.
I liked that although Leon speaks to Jake about their differences he also talks to him about the things they have in common. “Mum says he’s coloured but Dad says he’s black but they’re both wrong because he’s dark brown and I’m light brown…You’ve got blonde hair and she’s got blonde hair. We’ve both got thin eyebrows and we’ve got long fingers.”
The only thing Leon doesn’t like about his new brother is his name. Leon wanted his mum to name him after one of the characters from his favourite TV show Dukes of Hazard.
When Jake and Carol come home from the hospital Leon is fascinated by Jake and finds him more entertaining than the TV. His fascination with Jake’s bowel was one of the many things that made me laugh “Babies’ poo is a funny colour – it’s not brown, it’s greeny yellow – and Carol has to wipe it all with special new baby lotion.”
Within a few days of Carol and Jake being home Leon notices that his mother is crying all the time. “Leon has begun to notice the things that make a lot of noise; when she hasn’t got any money; when she comes back from the phone box; when Leon asks too many questions; and when she’s staring at Jake. “
Leon and Jake are being taken to Carol’s friend Tina’s all the time, so often that Tina’s boyfriend has commented and they have stayed there for days at a time. Tina advises Carol that she should go to the doctors about her moods.
Leon’s mum has mental health issues and Leon is often left to look after both Jake and his mum. “Some days Leon doesn’t go to school at all, just stays home with Jake while their mum sleeps. But when he does go, Leon has to wake his mum up before he leaves to remind her about Jake. Sometimes she tells him to go away and he spends the whole day thinking about Jake’s dinner or Jake’s nap-time.”
“He has to look after Jake nearly every day and Carol keeps crying and going to the phone box, leaving Leon in charge, and once when he picked Jake up, he wriggled so much that he fell on the carpet. He had stopped crying by the time Carol came back but it made Leon feel angry with her and he stole some more coins out of her purse. But he could have taken all the money because she doesn’t know what’s in there…His nappy is always heavy and wet but as soon as Leon changes it, Jake starts smiling and laughing.”
Some of the scenes were harrowing to read, “Jake isn’t even wearing a nappy anymore because it smelt terrible and all the new nappies have gone. He had to sit Jake on a towel in his basket and put some toys in with him but he can get out now and roll all over the place and looking after Jake is getting much too hard. And they’re both hungry all the time these days. Jake has been crying all morning and Carol won’t do anything.”
Eventually Leon gets desperate and goes to borrow some money off Tina. Tina comes to their flat and is so shocked by what she sees, and the state of Carol, that she calls an ambulance and social services. “She looks at how untidy Leon has been and how he has sat in front of the telly and eaten his cereal by putting his hand in the box. How he hasn’t put Jake’s nappies in the bin. How he should have opened the window like Tina does in her house and made everywhere smell of baby lotion. Leon sees what Tina sees. Why didn’t he tidy up before he asked her for any money?”
When the social workers come Leon notices they have ‘Pretend Faces’ on. He knows they will pretend to be happy or sad and all the while they will be avoiding telling him what is really going on. Leon sits and listens guiltily while Tina explains to the social workers what has been going on.
“It all got out of hand when the baby’s dad finished with her. Tony, I think he’s called. Don’t know his second name. She took it bad I mean really bad.’
‘What about Leon’s father? Is he around?’
‘Him? Byron? Not him, he’s done a runner. Carol said he was supposed to go to court and he couldn’t face it. But even when he was around he wasn’t much use. He’d come and go as he pleased. He’d be with her for a couple of weeks then he’d be off. Then he was inside for a bit and as soon as he was out they were arguing all the time. And drinking. Both of them drank. And anyway, when she got pregnant by Tony it all just came to a head.”
Leon and Jake are placed temporarily with a foster mother called Maureen. Once they are in Maureen’s home Leon overhears her talking to the social worker he calls Zebra. Leon is angry that they are talking about his mum again. “he’s been the main carer….baby and mother, yes, both of them…malnourished…failure to thrive…drug dependency.”
After a short time living with Maureen Leon is told that Jake is being adopted and won’t be living with them anymore. “Because love. Just because. Because he’s a baby, a white baby. And you’re not. Apparently because people are horrible and because life isn’t fair, Pigeon. Not fair at all. And if you ask me, it’s plain wrong.”
Leon likes Maureen but all he wants is to live with Carol and Jake. He doesn’t understand why he can’t be the one to look after them and he feels guilty like it is all his fault that he can’t.
Over time Leon finds things that distract him from his anger and frustration. He likes Maureen and enjoys the stories her sister Sylvia tells him. Leon also enjoys spending time with the new friends he meets along the way. All the time he is constantly plotting to get back to Carol and Jake so they can be a family again.
There were several times where this book moved me to tears and several more where it made me angry, ultimately though it made me care about what happened to every single character.
There were a lot of emotive topics dealt with in this book; race, adoption and mental health. All the topics were dealt with in a sensitive manner.