The commanders had arrived at the house over the course of the previous few nights, each under cover of darkness, in blacked-out cars and only after the surrounding area had been scanned and checked to ensure they weren't being observed. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Guardian Crossing boundaries … Malorie Blackman won a Bafta for the TV adaptation of Pig Heart Boy in 2000. The United Kingdom's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. This week Literature on Lockdown thinks of spring and looks at how organisations from around the literary world are responding differently to the challenges of lockdown.

True to Malorie Blackman’s usual style of writing in the Noughts and Crosses series, Endgame’s narrative jumps back between the various characters, plus scenes that throw the reader back to Dan Jeavon’s notorious party, adding further to the tension and suspense that builds up and up for the reader until the story reaches its final climax. Many of the situations and insults depicted are commonplace in real life, but Blackman reverses it for her fictional world in which white people are the victims. Blackman wanted to be an English teacher, until her careers adviser told her: “Black people don’t become teachers. I watched my daughter conjure up the filthiest look in her vast arsenal before she turned away with complete disdain.It's not that the story is that bad - on the contrary the story and the layout of jumping through the timeline kept me intrigued - but that I really did not like the writing. As the lack of human donor organs becomes painfully apparent, Cameron and his family face an agonising and far-reaching decision when they are offered a pig’s heart. And as Rose takes her first steps away from Sephy and into this world, she finds herself drawn inexorably into more and more danger. In this world, black people are ‘Crosses’ (always with a capital ‘C’) and whites are ‘noughts’ (with a lower-case ‘n’).

This is a book and a series full of incredibly uncomfortable truths told in a compelling way, it should be on every school curriculum.It makes perfect sense to me that Sephy would treat her daughter in such a way to keep her independent and 'make her stronger'.