Full of friendship and drama, Olivia’s First Term captures the very special atmosphere of a stage school. Olivia’s life is full of dancing classes and acting classes but Olivia is really from the circus like her father so, whenever she can, she slips away and practices a bit on the high wire! But Olivia is also much poorer than most of the other students and there is one girl in particular who is determined to make her feel bad about it! How Olivia finds courage to stand up to bullies and be herself is a gripping and heartwarming drama.
Olivia is sad and lonely and angry - angry that she's been dumped with her sister Eel at her grandmother's school, and angrier still that that school turns out to be a stage school where there's no encouragement for her to do what she loves best: practice her circus skills. But in the course of a turbulent first term, Olivia finds out much more than she bargained for about the theatre, about friendship, about enemies, about her family and about herself.
Lyn Gardner is the author of Olivia’s First Term and the other Olivia books. She was born in London and now lives near Richmond Park with her partner and two daughters. A theatre critic on The Guardian, she goes to the theatre five or six nights a week, which should leave no time for writing books at all.
Before she became a journalist, Lyn was a tea lady, a waitress and sold advertising space for a magazine called Sludge. Her ambitions are to learn to tap dance and walk the high wire, but it may have to be the low wire as she is a bit scared of heights!
