Nate Yu’s Blast from the Past – at a glance
The School Reading Lists’ five word review: Change, identity, history, acceptance, family.
Children’s book title: Nate Yu’s Blast from the Past.
Children’s author: Maisie Chan.
Genre: Children’s fiction.
Published by: Piccadilly Press.
ISBN: 9781800787896.
Recommended for children aged: 9+ year-olds.
First published: Paperback June 2025.
This children’s book is ideal for: : looking at what makes you you. Finding your place in today’s world while understanding what had to happen historically for this to have happened.
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Our review:
Life for Nathan Yu Riley, who likes to be called Nate, has changed massively. He hasn’t just moved schools – with his adoptive mums, Mum and Momo, affectionately known as the parentals – he’s also moved home, leaving behind everything he knew about life in a small village for a house in Liverpool where they know no one and nothing about living in a sprawling city.
The only thing that hasn’t changed is his beloved ant colony, led by Queen Elizabeth III. They are the one constant in his life that helps him get through the day. Unfortunately, things don’t go as smoothly as he’d like from the start! In the first two days of school, although he finds a good friend, he also breaks the nose of the leader of his school house! By the inset day in the summer term, he has been found by another friend, who actually served and died during the First World War! Jirou is Chinese, very dead, and apparently shares a heritage with Nate, which he thinks is amazing, as he is adopted.
Jirou has a secret which has prevented him from passing over, and it seems Nate is the only one who can find out what happened and why. But how can he be conversing with a ghost who no one else can see? Where do you even start to discover what happened to one soldier over a century earlier?
Our verdict:
Nate is a confused boy, no longer waking up to the sounds of the countryside. He now lives in Liverpool because, apparently, according to the parents, it will be easier for him to feel connected to his culture that way. Written in the first person, Nate’s story covers everything from the bullying he was subjected to in his old school to how his mum’s concerns and the secrets all three are keeping make their lives far harder than they need to be.
Jirou, a Chinese interpreter from the First World War, reaches out to Nate via a piece of trench art in an exhibition at school, and they begin their quest together to eventually return the artefact to its rightful owner. Along the way, Nate makes friends with a boy called Ryan and a girl called Missy, who, to Nate’s amazement, is also of Chinese heritage.
The fallout from Nate’s bullying at his previous school resonates in everything he does, and his relationship with his ant colony links those experiences and Jirou’s time in France to show what he now needs to do to be able to move forward. This adds an original and personal perspective to subjects which are often written about, and the positive ending shows how discussion, openness, and honesty are all needed for a successful outlook, and that the real person is far more than their circumstances and what others think they know about them.
Teaching points and book club discussion ideas:
- The ant colony is very similar to life in the trenches that soldiers endured during the First World War. The hierarchy is also similar. Make a list of these similarities as well as the differences in the constructions and rank. Re-read the notes Nate puts at the beginning of each chapter. Does the author’s use of the ants help you understand Jirou’s situation more clearly?
- Moving up to senior school is hard enough without the problems Nate encountered. How could things have been different if Nate had told the truth about his bullying from the start?
- There were no other students like him at Nate’s first senior school. How do you think being friends with Missy and her family helped him, Mum, and Momo understand his place in everything?
- Nate, Ryan, and Missy all needed each other and accepted their differences and difficulties without question — until Jirou appeared. What proof would you need to believe your best friend had a ghost as a friend?
- Nate had no idea that young Chinese men were enlisted by the British. In a cross-curricular activity with history, look at which other nationalities served alongside British servicemen during the First World War. Should their roles be more prominent in your lessons?
- Trench art was a very personal type of war relic. How would you feel if something you had made was given away instead of taken back to its rightful owner? Was Nate right when he said it wasn’t Jirou’s fault that he bartered it for an easier existence?
Many thanks to Piccadilly Press for the review copy.
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