This book was amazing! Great sentimental value in the story, and shows the meaning of bravery, courage and love. This was a fun read for my cousins and they enjoyed the adventure elements to the book. Also shows a great deal about families all being different

A book I was just on the verge of ditching – before it told me what it was really about at just the right moment. This starts off very awkwardly, with Sam seeing their brother fall down a hole in the beach and break his ankle – and it's the illustrations, not the text, that tell us Sam is a boy Sam and not a girl Sam. Either way, because of this daft contrivance he gets to meet Tess, a wacky lass who worries about woodwork qualifications, waltzing (and here is a clue perhaps that Sam is a boy, except there is no way (until we're halfway in) Tess would not lead in their lessons together), zebrafish, jazz and trumpet-playing… There is no end of the pointless-quirk-for-pointless-quirk's-sake about Tess, until we do finally get to see what she is playing at, and how her self-imposed quest might well compel Sam to spend a lot of time on his coastal island family holiday week with the girl.

I'll not spoil this by saying what those reasons are – fer cryin' out loud, it's obvious from the title we're not supposed to have a Scoobie about what the real subject of this is. But buyer beware, you do have to get a quarter of the way through this, past bonkers authorial decisions and through the needlessly quirky, to see what we're really here for. And the oddball doesn't end there, either – Sam piling on the junior morbidity literally like there's no tomorrow. More than that, we get a wonderful End of Act Two beat that sounds brilliant, setting up a surprise for the final third – but the get-out is not as daft as a brush, as there's only half a brush involved. Do we really turn to fiction to be reminded how stupid human beings can get?

Whatever the answer, slowly, in pieces, and amidst the daftness, we see the seize-the-day, family-first morals of the piece, and watch the whole thing come together. And rest assured, when it works it really works, and we finally see why this short piece became a movie – people always say it's the shorter fictions that work best in cinema form, and this doesn't suggest otherwise in its brief, impactful running time. It also invokes another rule, and a long-standing rule of mine, that the slowness of something reaching translation proves the work's lack of worth. The fact this was ten years old before getting the English language treatment does not prove that rule wrong – it just shows people dumped it before the one-third mark. You'll be eternally thankful if you stayed longer than that to see all this play out.

My Especially Weird Week with Tess is a delightful story about 11 year old Sam who arrives on Texel for a week-long family vacation with his parents and older brother, Jasper. Sam is finding it increasingly difficult to get along with his brother, who is moody and uncommunicative for reasons that Sam can't quite understand.

The situation worsens after Jasper breaks his ankle, because this means that most of the entertainments available on the island (biking, kite flying etc) are not feasible options for him. Meanwhile, Sam's mother also struggles with migraines. So, with his parents focusing their limited energies on Jasper's problems, Sam is at something of a loose end.

Luckily, after accompanying his father and Jasper to the clinic, Sam meets a strange girl while he is waiting outside. This is the beginning of the weirdest week of his life, as Sam and 12-year-old Tess embark on a series of adventures, ranging from organising a funeral for a canary to figuring out whether to tell Tess's long-lost father that he has a daughter!

For Sam, who is given to worrying about all kinds of existential issues, this is not just a welcome respite from thinking about things like, for example, if the last dinosaur felt lonely or was looking forward to death. It is also an opportunity to see life from a completely different perspective - not least because Tess is completely different from anyone Sam has ever met.

This was such a fun read. I highly recommend it for some enjoyable reading time. The writer, Anna Woltz, skilfully addresses the serious issues of family dynamics, old age, loneliness, and death, without being in the least morbid. And the reader is left smiling at the charming friendship that develops between Tess and Sam in the course of one (especially) weird week!

This book is wonderfully quirky. It has elements of a slapstick comedy film, characters who are interesting and likeable. Sam is holidaying with his family when, on the first day of the his holiday, his brother has an unfortunate accident. This leads to the family being unable to undertake their usual holiday activities and Sam makes an unusual friendship with a local girl- Tess. Tess lives with her mum and doesn’t know who her dad is- or does she? Role on a 12 year old’s plots to get to know her biological father without her mother - or her father- finding out.
This is an easy read and there is something wonderfully Scandinavian about it, the story is really clean cut and sharp, additional characters pop in and out but the focus remains on Tess and Sam. I rally enjoyed it and will buy a copy for my Year 6 classroom as I think many of my class will love it too.

A really quirky read. I enjoyed the story and I enjoyed meeting the characters. I liked what it had to say about friendship and family