Mini-Review

‘Talking Tomatoes’ is far and away the best story in Kate Walker’s 1995 short story collection Changes. It’s a long-ish story, at 38 pages. Rodney, an arrogant, swaggering debater-boy, falls in love with Vivienne and takes the role of Romeo in a school play so he can win her over — she’s Juliet. A series of experiences cause him to begin to see himself as other people see him. A couple of problematic moments in this story occur when a girl called Mavis is compared to a cow and criticised for talking too much (although there is a valid narrative reason for this). Overall, I very really like this story — a great one for 14+ (although no reason why younger students couldn’t read it). Good intertextual references to Romeo and Juliet for teens studying the play.

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