Even once I’d been absorbed into the story line, I didn’t enjoy it much, although I did appreciate that the large print made it easy for me to power through it. He lives in the 'new East End' where there is a difficult brew of white, Caribbean, African and Asian families.

And then there was the part where Zephaniah said it was a Friday, and in the following scene it was “the next day” and still Friday, somehow. This would be an excellent prompt for discussion about prejudices regarding appearance and our reaction to those less fortunate than ourselves. And although his old friends melted away from him, I was glad that Martin was able to make other friends.It's all a bit different being on the receiving end of other people's prejudices, about disabilities, or race, or anything else. I thought that they were interesting and unique characters and I would have loved to learn more about them. I was only 11/12 and I loved it, the reality of perceptions, peer pressure and a character learning to be confident in his own skin - brilliant read. You have to be careful what you say and who you say it to on the streets of Martin's neighbourhood - not that Martin is particularly racist: 'I ain't got nothing against blacks, they're just different, they dance different and everything.

Face was okay, but it wasn’t Zephaniah’s best – it was a little too preachy, too much like a moral tale, and it took me a while to get into it. Through this trial he discovers who his true friends are, the difference between love and lust, and what it really means to be beautiful.Plot-wise, it follows the story of a kid who gets into a car accident and who badly injures his face. Even though the book did not meet my expectations of some crazy story (but that's not a problem with the book but with my assumptions) I still loved it when I realised it wasn't going where I'd assumed.