See ya Simon

By David Hill

Fourteen-year-old Simon has amazing soccer skills, a wicked sense of humour, and a way with girls. What Simon doesn’t have is time. It’s hard for his classmates, particularly his best friend Nathan, to imagine school without Simon’s wisecracks, pranks, and wisdom. But they find that just as they are beginning to make plans for their own lives, they must figure out how to say goodbye to Simon.

What’s different is that Simon has muscular dystrophy – he’s in a wheelchair and doesn’t have long to live. “See Ya Simon” is told by Simon’s best friend,

See Ya, Simon was the winner of the 1994 Times Educational Supplement Nasen Award and the German Medical Women’s Association children’s literature prize, The Silver Pen Award in 1997. It was shortlisted for the AIM Children’s Senior Fiction Award and the NZLIA Esther Glen Award 1993, and in 2002 received the Gaelyn Gordon Award. See Ya, Simon has been published in the USA, UK, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, China, Japan and Slovenia.