Bookworms

Just read about this book today, it's a coincidence that it came out just before the bomb attacks.

Suicide bomb novel proves popular

Malorie Blackman won the FCBG Children's Book Award

A children's novel featuring a mixed-race teenage girl groomed to become a suicide bomber has become a best-seller in the UK.

Checkmate, by Malorie Blackman, was number two in book chain Waterstone's latest teenage fiction sales chart.

The book was published in June, before four suicide bombers attacked London and four attempted bombings took place.

Spokeswomen for Waterstone's and publisher Random House Children's Books said they had received no complaints.

Ruling class

Checkmate is the third part of a trilogy of novels that analyses issues of race and inequality.

Its author Blackman won the Federation of Children's Book Groups (FCBG) Children's Book Award, and was the only black writer voted into the top 100 in the BBC's Big Read popularity poll in 2004.

The three novels are set in a fictional world occupied by a ruling class of black people called Crosses and a subservient class of white people called Noughts.

In the first book, Noughts and Crosses, a Nought terrorist group called the Liberation Militia launched a bomb attack on a shopping centre.

In Checkmate, the daughter of a Nought man and Cross woman sets out to murder a leading Cross politician in a suicide bombing on her 16th birthday, having been recruited by the Liberation Militia.

Waterstone's said Checkmate was also "just outside" the top 50 in its list of best-selling books across all genres.

Just thought I'd share this with you...