J.C.Burke’s book, The red Cardigan is about a young girl who claims to have a ‘gift’ where she knows things and see’s them before they happen. Evie, the young girl had the special gift passed down from her grandmother. The text explores the themes of psychological realism, crime mystery and the supernatural. This book was very detailed and interesting which kept me wanting to read more.
The Red Cardigan is about Evie seeing things that others don’t. She likes to draw but sometimes her hands draw something completely different then what she was wanting to draw. Evie wears an opshop store red cardigan which used to belong to another girl who is now murdered and missing. Since she started wearing it she has been getting hints from that girl such as her hands drawing a picture of the missing girl, and all these hints eventually lead to a solved crime mystery. Evie first discovered her gift very young when she was in the car and every time she drove past a certain spot she would see a girl standing on the corner covered in blood. Later on she finds out that that was where a girl had been hit and killed. She was the only one who could see this though and didn’t understand at the time. Evie’s mum doesn’t approve of this gift and wants to have nothing to do with it so as Evie struggles to solve this crime she also battles with her mum and makes life very hard for her.
The positive aspects of this text is that it is really interesting and has a really good and strong story line. This book is not confusing but very easy to understand what is happening and it has many details to help tell the story. The text is very organised and also has flashbacks throughout the text which help you understand and keep you interested and always thinking. We can see this when Evie experiences a flashback in the middle of the book of one of her dreams she had about a specific place, which didn’t make sense to her at the time, but now when she’s at that place, she