Introduction

by Julia Eccleshare
Puffin Modern Classics series editor

Junk: the very title was enough to shock when it was published in 1996. Drugs are the enemy – and especially the enemy of the young. To put the word ‘Junk’ and children’s books together looked like madness.

And sure enough, Junk created a storm of protest – especially from those who didn’t bother to read it.

But for those who did, it raised up a different storm. Credible, honest, moving and sympathetic – not to drug taking, but to some of the reasons for it and to how the young fall into it and then, with luck and a bit of help, get themselves out if it – Melvin Burgess had written a book which was responsible and caring. Instead of turning his back on a subject whose very existence many adults want to deny, he shows it as the reality which many adolescents know all too well.

There are many moments which shock, as Melvin Burgess intends: the physical and mental terror of addiction that he describes raises goose pimples and there is no shying away from the long-term damage – even death – that drugs can inflict. But Junk also shows that humanity doesn’t die with addiction. Junk builds up a picture of a community whose lives come together by chance. Written in different voices, but with Tar and Gemma as the most familiar characters, it is open-minded and thought-provoking as the stories weave together, giving insights into the vagaries of the tellers’ lives and especially their responses to drugs. Junk remains a lasting example of the power of honest storytelling. It won both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award.