'In this compelling story of teenage rivalry and friendship, award-winning author Keith Gray captures the subtle agonies and reality of life growing up in a small town.
'Sully is the best climber in the village. He can scale the Twisted Sister’s tangled branches and clamber up Double Trunker with ease. But when new kid Nottingham shows up and astonishes everyone with his climbing skills, Sully’s status is under threat and there’s only one way to prove who’s best. Sully and Nottingham must race to climb the last unnamed tree. Whoever makes it to the top will become a legend. But something spiteful and ugly has reared its head in Sully ... Is it worth losing everything just to reach the top?'
The Clmbers is the latest release from Barrington Stoke books, and focuses on the struggles that teens can face living in small towns, and how they can pin their entire identity on one thing; even if that leads to them having to face awful consequences.
The story follows Sully, a teenage boy who lives in a town where there's not much for the kids to do, save climb trees. Climbing has become not just something to keep the kids busy, but something that they put all of their focus and energy into. For some, like Sully, it borders on an obsession. Whilst most of the trees in the town aren't much of a challenge for most of the climbers there are five that all the kids want to climb, the Big Five.
There's Twisted Sister, the Corkscrew Willow; Spider Trap, the Larch; Crazy Ash Bastard, the Ash tree; Double Trunker, the Oak tree spit in two by lightning; and The Last Tree, a huge Yew tree that hasn't been climbed by anyone yet, and as such hasn't been given a name. Sully has climbed the first four trees, and has set his sights on being the first to reach the top of the fifth, giving him the chance to name it.
However, when a new kid, Nottingham, arrives in town Sully sees his chances of naming the last tree beginning to slip from his fingers. Nottingham is a good climber, perhaps even better than Sully is. But rather than admitting that, rather than trying to make a friend, Sully sees Nottingham as nothing but a threat, and the two of them instantly clash. Their rivalry builds over just a few days, and the two of them agree to race up The Last Tree in the ultimate challenge of climbing skills. However, with Sully obsessing over his climbing he runs the risk of hurting his closest friend, and begins to realise that maybe he might be focusing on the wrong things in life.
The Climbers story struck me as one about addiction and obsession, and how destructive these feelings can be. Throughout the course of the book we see Sully obsessing over climbing above everything else. He pushes away his closest friend, he realises that he has no plans or cares about his future, and even begins to realise that his gloating and showmanship isn't appreciated by the other kids in the town. Sully begins the book believing that he's the best, and that everyone else must think the same and must love him because of that, but is slowly challenged as he learns that he's not as special or popular as he might think.
This might seem like a strange theme to build a kids book around, but I'd say it's pretty perfect. I remember clearly how many kids would make a certain aspect of their life their sole focus when I was a kid. It could have been who was the best at football, who was the best at Pokemon, who had the latest new fad, who had the most friends. Whatever it was, there was always something that kids would compete over, and it often led them to ignore everything else and make their whole personality this one thing. I dare say I even did it a few times.
Whilst this might seem harmless enough it's something that teaches some pretty bad habits, and kids who think this way can easily become adults who think this way. The Climbers takes the time show that this kind of thinking can often lead to you feeling alone or isolated, and that it can hurt those around you. It has an important lesson to its young readers that it's okay to not be the very best, to see that there are people that are better at certain things than you and not to be angry about it.
The book doesn't shy away from how nasty it can be to constantly be competing against other, or how putting yourself first can sometimes be cruel. There were times during the narrative that I found myself not liking Sully, where I saw what he was doing and I disliked him for it. He can be sneaky and vindictive, yet there are moments where he lets his guard down and those are when we see the good kid underneath trying to come out. Sully learns his lessons hard in this book, by causing real pain and suffering to others, but hopefully seeing it written out this way will help kids avoid doing the same in their real lives.
The Climbers is a story about having to fight your own inner demons to try and do the right thing, and about how failing to do so can have awful consequences. It's an important lesson that kids sometimes need to be shown.
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