Twelve-year-old Mira has just started a creative writing class in her school, led by Pat Print. There's plenty going on in her life so she has lots she should be able to draw on for material and ideas, but there's little she actually wants to share with anyone.

Her family are lively and chaotic and her Nana Josie is ill. Mira has reached an age when her body is changing, and she's also hoping for her first boyfriend.

There's a lot covered in the book - love and loss, life and death, openness and secrecy, poetry and prose!

We learn all about Mira, what she's thinking and feeling, and also through the exercises in her writing class we see what she is hiding and revealing through the essays, short stories, poems and word play. And these are great tools for any budding writers reading the book to adopt for themselves.

This was described as one of the 'bold and brave' winners of the Waterstone's prize - a book that engages "with complex issues in innovative and extraordinary ways. Stories that move, provoke and stay with you forever." I'm glad this book didn't pass me by!