The following letter was written to G.R. Gemin, author of Cowgirl, by 12-year-old Ines, one of the book’s first readers. She’s kindly allowed us to re-print it here.
Dear Gian,
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read Cowgirl before it came out. I really enjoyed it and loved reading it. I like your story because it’s weird, wacky and wonderful (that’s a good thing by the way). It was very descriptive and I never knew what was going to happen next. It’s also a good book because many different age groups can still enjoy it. The book was very enjoyable and happy (which are usually the types of books I read). It was also very moving but funny at the same time. I liked the granny’s character a lot. Gemma was a very realistic character and when I read the book I felt as if I was in her shoes. Gemma was described very well and was one of the good main characters. I find Cowgirl’s character quite mysterious and I couldn’t work out what she was thinking some of the time which really made me want to read more. I also liked the fact that it felt like a true story as the setting was described well and the characters were described well. Frankly I’m pretty scared of cows myself and are terrified of the large ones. Hopefully I’ll get over that fear one day. When I started reading your book I wanted to carry on reading because I wanted to know what was going to happen next to the cows, whereas some books that are written by famous authors such as Enid Blyton (I think that’s her name) I find really boring and I don’t want to carry on. I think your book was very succesfull and hopefully you will carry on and write more books and I am certain that in a few years lots and lots of people will be reading your books. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read your first ever book published it was absolutely brilliant. Continue writing more books. Thank you once again.
Ines
Thank you, Ines, for this lovely letter and review! Cowgirl is out this month – a funny, moving story for 9-12 year olds (think Michael Morpurgo meets Jacqueline Wilson) and an absolutely outstanding debut from an exciting new voice in children’s literature. If you’ve not discovered it yet, you can read the first three chapters of the book below, or order it online here.
