The College Collection Set 1 - for reluctant readers

By Georgina Jonas

The College Collection centres around five main characters, Luca, Anda, Jim Jam, Woody and Nolan. They are from different backgrounds and first meet at Parkfield College, where they are studying for a BTEC in Media Studies. They quickly become friends. The College Collection follows them through their time at Parkfield College and the adventures and adversities they experience there. Above all they work hard, have fun and their friendship shines through. The subliminal messages of overcoming failure, of acceptance and support run through all the texts, alongside messages of resilience and perseverance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crown House Publishing
• Release date: Aug 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781785831546

Georgina Jonas

Georgina Jonas - the pen name for the collective talent and expertise of one full-time teacher, who has also been a children's storyteller, and one former headmistress who currently tutors and leads workshops to show parents the best way to help their children with maths and English.

Book preview

Chapter 1

To Name or Not to Name

When I was born my parents found it hard to decide what to call me.

They couldn’t decide whether to call me Jemima or Samantha.

Jemima Leverton or Samantha Leverton? Both sounded good.

For a week they tried them both out.

One day they called me Jemima, and then the next day they called me Samantha. That didn’t work. It was confusing.

They still couldn’t make up their minds.

Then they started calling me both names together.

Jemima Samantha, they’d say.

It was a bit of a mouthful, so they shortened it to Jem Sam!

My older sister was three when I was born and she got terribly muddled and kept getting it wrong.

She couldn’t remember Jem Sam.

Jim Jam, she’d say … and it stuck.

So, although my full name is Jemima Samantha Leverton, I have always been called Jim Jam.

Chapter 2

Tidying

My earliest memories are of my sister and brother saying, Mum, Jim Jam’s tidying again.

I didn’t see it that way. I wasn’t tidying.

I was putting things straight, back in their proper place, if you like.

It always seemed to me that everything has a proper place.

Pencils like to be straight. They like to be pointing straight upwards in pencil holders or lying flat in straight rows on the desk.

Small cushions like to be sitting up, usually with one corner pointing up, while handles on cupboards and chests of drawers definitely like to be pointing down.

Photos like their frames to be lined up with the shelf so that they can get a good look around the room.

Toilet rolls particularly fascinate me.

My family used to get quite worried about the amount of time I was spending in the loo.

They thought that I might be in some sort of trouble. They’d knock on the door and ask if I was all right.

I was all right.

I wasn’t in trouble.

I was struggling to undo the roller bit of the loo roll holder, so that I could take off the loo roll and turn it around. Toilet paper definitely likes to be hanging down from the front and not hanging down from the back.

That was the reason I was taking a long time.

Putting the roller bit back was always more tricky than getting it off. If you were not careful it was apt to pinch your fingers at the last minute.

Nowadays, unless they are my own, I’m not so nitpicky about pencils and the like, as other people seem to think it’s quite rude if I fiddle with their things.

But I still cannot resist rearranging the loo rolls! No one can actually see me do it. If they notice, well, it could have been anyone who changed it round. They might not think that was me!

Chapter 3

The Power Cut

It was a cold, dark night in November.

I had got home from school, changed, finished my homework and was now snuggled up on the sofa watching cartoons on the television.

My little brother, Jack, was also on the sofa, watching and giggling. He was sitting way down the other end of the sofa because he can’t sit still. He wriggles and makes funny noises as he watches.

I like to surround myself with cushions, tuck myself up under a blanket and switch off. I can forget all about school.

I can forget about the things I haven’t done, the things I should be doing and all the petty rivalries of the day. For those few minutes I can stop and lose myself in the flickering nonsense of the screen.

So there we were, watching cartoons, when suddenly Mum rushed in to tell us that we’d run out of milk so she’d have to go and get some.

My sister, Jade, was out at a friend’s house and my dad was not back from work yet. But Mum told us that there was no need for us to come with her; she’d only be leaving us alone for five minutes.

Then she repeated all the usual warnings; don’t open the door to strangers, don’t answer the phone and don’t touch anything in the kitchen.

We nodded to her, heard the front door slam and settled back to enjoy the cartoons.

Then it happened.

All the lights went out.

No lights, no television, nothing.

We had a power cut.

I told Jack not to move and went off in search of a torch. I knew that I’d find one in the kitchen. Mum had told us not to touch anything in the kitchen, but this was an emergency so I figured it wouldn’t count.

I got up and started to grope my way to the door. I brushed past the smooth arm of a wooden chair and stretched out to feel the rough texture of the wallpaper, which I followed until I came to the door. I spread out my fingers and worked my way across it searching for the handle.

I found it and pulled it open, heard the soft creak of the hinges and stepped out into the hall.

I shivered; it was much colder all of a sudden. I was only wearing socks on my feet and there was no warm carpet in the hall. I could feel the chill of the floor tiles as I crept carefully across the hall.

Gingerly, with my hands held straight out in front of me, I inched my way over to where I knew the chest was, on the other side of the hall. From there I could find my way to the kitchen door.

I was fairly certain that four or five paces would do it but I had no idea if anyone had left anything lying in the middle of the hall that would trip me up.

I walked slowly.

I was taking no chances.

When at last my hand felt the sharp edge of the chest I held onto it, until I found the cold, smooth handle of the kitchen door. I pushed the door open and stood still.

Before me, but unseen in the dark, were the two steps that led down into the kitchen. Carefully I slid my foot forward until I could feel the edge of the top stair. Cautiously, with one hand firmly on the doorframe, I made my way down into the kitchen.

I felt my way around the work surface until I came to the drawers. I counted down three handles and slid open the third drawer.

Being extremely careful, I felt my way through cake cases, cookie cutters, birthday candles and place mats until my hand found the cylindrical shape of the torch. I turned it over in my hands until I located the switch. I pressed it, and it worked.

Now that I could see, finding my way back to Jack was going to be much easier.

Crossing the hall strange shadows leapt out at me and I gasped when the beam of the torch picked out a large photo of Uncle Ben. For a horrible moment I thought that he was a real person standing there silently watching me.

I called out to Jack, carried on back into the living room and sat down on the sofa next to him.

At that very moment three things happened very quickly. The lights came on, the front door opened and Mum came in.

There, she said, I knew you’d be all right. I don’t suppose you even missed me.

Jack and I exchanged glances and smiled.

Chapter 4

Elvis

When I was little I shared a bedroom with my big sister. It was quite a small room but to us it seemed huge.

There was a door at one end, a window at the other end and two small single beds on either side.

The walls were white and Mum had painted a colossal rainbow over the door. I don’t remember her doing it. I just remember it always having been there.

She once told me how she had done it. First she’d found a pencil and a piece of string. Then she’d tied the pencil to one end of the string and taped the other end of the string to the floor.

Then Mum had taken the pencil in one hand and drawn a huge arc from the bottom of the wall, right over the door, to the bottom of the wall on the other side.

Then she had let out the string a little bit and drawn another bigger arc over the first one. Then Mum repeated it, doing it over and over again until she had drawn seven sections. Then she painted the top one red. The next one was painted orange and so on until finally she got to the one just over the door, which she painted violet.

Then Mum had cut out some cartoon characters and stuck them on to look as if they were sitting on the rainbow.

Our beds faced the door so we had a clear view of it.

It really was a beautiful rainbow.

Then we grew older and needed more space. Mum and Dad had the loft converted to make an extra room. It became my bedroom.

Even though they had a dormer window put in, it was still impossible to walk around the room standing upright. You could really only stand upright in the middle of the room. The roof sloped down on each side making the room feel a little like a tent.

I loved it. It was a real teenager’s bedroom and I was allowed to decorate it exactly how I wanted. The cartoon characters on the rainbow had been great but now that I was older and had my own bedroom, I wanted a change.

I searched through magazines to find pictures of pop stars and actors that I liked. Then I cut them out and stuck them up on one of my walls.

I was very careful to cut carefully, and make sure that all the edges were straight. Then I laid all the pictures out on my floor, rearranging them until I had them in exactly the right pattern. Finally I pasted them carefully onto the wall.

All my favourites were there, and in pride of place, right in the middle, was a large photo of Elvis. I know. Elvis was not my era. In fact he had died long before I was even born, but I liked Elvis. I had grown up with the sound of Elvis.

My nan was a fan. She loved his music and I had listened to it at her house. In fact, Elvis seemed to be singing every time I visited her. Elvis and his songs were a part of my early childhood and because I adored my nan, I associated Elvis with her and adored him too.

Then a very strange thing happened.

The photo of Elvis that I had cut out had been taken in such a way that it seemed as if his eyes were real and were actually looking at me.

His eyes seemed to follow me wherever I went.

If I walked over to one side of the room he could see me. If I walked over to the other side he could see me there too.

At first I thought it was funny, but soon I began to think it was creepy.

It felt as if he really was watching me and watching everything I did.

I felt uncomfortable.

I felt so uncomfortable that I began to believe that he actually could see everything I did. I began to hate his watching eyes.

I even decided to dress and undress in the bathroom. We only had one bathroom so me taking such a long time in the bathroom eventually got noticed by the rest of the family.

One evening Mum sat me down and asked me what was going on.

I tried saying that nothing was bothering me, but that didn’t work because Mum gently insisted that I tell her.

I felt so silly and thought Mum would think that I was silly too.

She didn’t. She put an arm round me.

Well, Jim Jam, she said, I think we need to replace Elvis with a different picture.

There and then, she helped me look through a pile of magazines until I found just what I wanted. I found a photo of an enormous shaggy dog.

The shaggy dog had so much hair that you couldn’t even see his eyes!

Chapter 5

The Trapeze

I broke my wrist when I was seven.

It was easy. The work of a moment.

One second I was running, the next I was lying on the ground nursing a broken wrist.

My parents did all the usual things. They took me to hospital and my arm was put in a cast. I was warned not to get it wet and all my friends signed it when I went back to school.

After six weeks and a couple of follow-up hospital appointments the cast came off.

The doctor told me to be careful with my arm, but to start using it normally again. The trouble