Artichoke Hearts

Sita Brahmachari's Artichoke Hearts is a family story for 11 year olds about a girl, her very ill nana and the coffin that turns up on her twelfth birthday.

What happens

Mira lives in London in a very noisy house. Her brother Krish burns the toast, the baby lobs porridge and Mum is flapping a tea towel at the smoke alarm before anyone has left for school. Mira is the quiet one. She blushes if she has to speak in class and she'd much rather paint than talk.

So when a writer runs a small club before school and asks everyone to keep a diary for a month, Mira isn't sure she's got anything to say. It turns out she has LOTS.

Nana Josie is so thin now that she feels cold all the time. She's also very much herself (bossy, funny and completely unembarrassable). She's ordered her own coffin from an eco company so she can paint it before she runs out of time. It's delivered in the middle of the birthday tea and holds up the whole street.

The scene with the woman in the big black Jeep honking her horn is one of the funniest scenes early on. It's also one of the saddest. That mix runs right through these opening chapters.

Reading it is like reading Mira's own diary, because that's exactly what it is. You get her crush on Jidé (the cleverest boy in Year Seven, who never talks about himself). You get her worry about getting through lunch without her best friend Millie. And you get the gift from Nana that gives the book its name, a tiny silver artichoke with a red heart in the middle.

It's worth saying clearly that this is a book about someone Mira loves getting close to the end of her life, and it doesn't look away. There's a coffin in the front room, a vivid dream about Nana floating away and plenty of talk about dying. Mira also starts her first period in the opening chapters, which is described plainly.

For a child who has recently lost a grandparent, it may be a lot. For an older reader who likes a story that makes them laugh and cry in the same chapter, it's a real treat. It could also be a gentle way into a conversation about illness in the family.

What to read next

If they're after another twelve-year-old girl and a very different sort of grandmother, try While I Was Away, where a Kansas girl is sent to spend five months with her strict Obaasama in Japan.