Tristan Bancks' "Detention" teachers' review

Brief description and distinctive features

Brief description of Detention

This thrilling story opens unexpectedly with an entire family lying on the ground. Sima and her family are being held at a detention facility and have been told they will be deported. They are desperate to stay in Australia and the family - father, mother, baby sister and Sima are about to escape through barbed wire and try to get to Griffith to find help with relatives who live there. In the escape Sima is separated from her parents and takes refuge in a boys’ toilet in a nearby school. In unfolding chapters, we follow Sima but also see the world through the eyes of another character called Dan. He is facing tough times with parents separated and mum distracted with a new fella. Dan is often alone in the caravan park van and hungry. When the school alarm sounds and a lockdown commences Sima is discovered and it is Dan who must decide what to do. Should he help her or report her to the authorities? Sima must decide can she trust this boy and the tension ratchets up as police start to move around the school looking for escapees. It’s a thriller so I can’t really tell you anymore!

Distinctive features of Detention

1. Great pace and excitement in this thriller that hooks the reader from the first page with its compelling escape sequence 
2. Dual third person narrative through the experiences of Sima and Dan
3. Strong protagonists with authentic dialogue and characterisation that is rounded and believable 
4. There are difficult physical and mental challenges for the young protagonists to deal with but they have agency, courage and each other 
5. A claustrophobic atmosphere is created by the author as most of the action takes place in contained (and constrained) spaces 
6. Hard choices and ethical decisions are required by the teenagers, and by some adults about helping a child get away or about going to the authorities 
7. Vivid scenes are often full of threat, tension and emotion as an escape, a lockdown and a chase are all cliffhanger scenes 
8. There are a variety of teaching possibilities available with this novel including as a four book author study or as a genre study with many elements of the thriller genre or as a close study of fiction 
9. The Author’s Note on pages 224-227 provides background information on Bancks’ purpose in writing the novel and a useful timeline of Sima’s journey
10. The Acknowledgements section (pages 228-232) provides information on writers and their books that inspired and helped Bancks as well as resources for finding out more information about refugee experiences in Australia. 

Ways to use Detention in the classroom

Banck’s reflection on what inspired him to write Detention could be a useful introduction to the class about the novel if you choose to use it for a close study of text. 

“Ten years ago, I was presenting at a school in Queensland and there was a fire drill right in the middle of my talk (this has happened several times since). We were all evacuated, 1200 kids and maybe 70 staff, to the school oval. While we were there, a few of the teachers and kids told me about lockdown situations they’d been in and I was fascinated. Escaped prisoners, wild animals on the loose, mistaken sightings of suspicious characters on school grounds. 

While lockdowns could be scary for kids, I felt that I could write a book about a class being forced to pull together with their teacher in order to overcome whatever it was that caused the lockdown. 

One of my favourite books as a teen was Gabrielle Lord’s Fortress and I love stories that take place in contained spaces. It provides a great challenge for the writer and is a good scenario for suspense and tension.”

From Penguin Teaching notes on Detention.  

Opening paragraph and prediction 

Prediction is a valuable tool in drawing students into a book and encouraging them to complete it. After reading the opening paragraph (below) ask students to predict what might happen in this novel.

“Sima watches the man carefully as he snips fence wires one by one. He's skinny, nervous, his shaved head slick with sweat and glowing silver in the moonlight. His tattooed hands squeeze the sharp cutters closed. The gap looks almost wide enough to get through now.”

Prediction 1: Write a possible plot line as prediction 1

Prediction 2: Then read the next line in the novel aloud, “Sima and her family are pressed to the rough, cold ground among about fifty others” and ask students to make a second prediction based on that new information.

Prediction 3: Then distribute the books and ask students to use the front cover to expand on their prediction.  

Prediction 4: This final prediction can be made after reading the blurb and considering any additional information it contains.  

Provide each student with an envelope and ask them to write their name on the front and place their predictions inside the envelope. Collect the envelopes and at the end of the unit return them to students and ask them to share if any of their predictions came true in the novel.

Characterisation of Sima and Dan 

Both protagonists are believable and authentic characters whose actions, words, fears and dreams are so important in establishing their interest for the reader. The character Sima is a member of the Hazara people and she was born in Afghanistan. Due to the volatile political and economic conditions in both Afghanistan and Pakistan many Hazara people fled their homes as refugees and some came to Australia.  Sima’s courage, tenacity and terror as she runs are all too real. 

The character Dan is often alone at home in the caravan park van. His parents have separated and his mum is preoccupied with a new partner and is often just not there so Dan has to fend for himself. Finding enough food and clothes is becoming an issue. He is lonely and keeps to himself at school which he can’t wait to leave.  His teacher, Miss Aston is concerned about him and has even come around to the van to find some answers. He is vulnerable and worried about a dog he is trying to help. When faced with Sima he has to make a really tough decision. 

Draw up a table and in groups list the major characteristics of both protagonists

Support your decisions with evidence from the novel.

Using Detention as part of a thriller genre and wide reading 

Genre is defined in the NSW 7-10 English Syllabus (2022) as 

“categories into which texts are grouped based on similarities in premise, structure and function. The ‘genre’ of a text describes larger recurring patterns of subject matter and textual structures observable between texts, such as typical plots, characters and setting. ‘Genre’ can also describe categories of form and structure in texts.”

Thrillers elements can include

• Heroes and villains
• Quests or a mission or crimes  
• Threats, risks and danger
• Cliffhangers
• High stakes  
• Fast pace
• Surprises and plot twists and a revelatory ending.

Such elements are also often found in the Adventure genre.  Ask students to identify and explore the ways such conventional elements operate in Detention. Have a book box containing several copies of texts such as Scar Town, A Walk in the Night, Holes, The Amber Amulet, The Good Thieves, The Wolf Wilder and Trash.  Ask students to choose a book from the book box so they can read more widely in the genre while discussing the overlap between adventure genre and thriller genres. Sometimes the difference between these two genres comes down to mood, tone and purpose and students can decide if their second novel is a thriller or an adventure genre or both!  

Teaching Notes

Detention is a book well supported with teaching resources by both the author and the publisher. Tristan Bancks has a range of resources on his webpage on Detention that support teachers in the classroom. You can find a book trailer and videos on creating a book soundtrack and vision boarding a novel at: https://www.tristanbancks.com/2019/03/detention-book-videos.html 

Extensive teaching notes by the author are also available as a download from Penguin. They are valuable for teachers as they show what has influenced the author in the writing of the book and have many ideas to inspire students’ own creative writing.

• Download Teachers' Notes for Scar Town - prepared by Tristan Bancks & Penguin Random House Australia
• Download Teachers' Notes for Detention  - prepared by Tristan Bancks & Penguin Random House Australia

Relevant details in relation to the new NSW English 7-10 syllabus

Text requirements: Detention is a novel (extended prose) written by an Australian author and includes a range of cultural, social and gender perspectives.
Looking for more classroom texts for Stage 4 students? Browse our Year 7 texts and study guides and Year 8 texts and study guides at Five Senses Education.

Concepts could include Narrative• Characterisation • Genre.

Relevant NSW English 7-10 Syllabus content

Reading, viewing and listening to texts

A student uses a range of personal, creative and critical strategies to read texts that are complex in their ideas and construction EN4-RVL-01

Reading, viewing and listening for meaning

• Explore the main ideas and thematic concerns posed by a text for meaning
• Engage with the ways texts contain layers of meaning, or multiple meanings
• Identify and understand that relevant prior knowledge and personal experience enables and enhances understanding when reading, viewing or listening to texts
• Explain personal responses to characters, situations and issues in texts, recognising the role of written, oral or visual language in influencing these personal responses
• Explain how the use of language forms and features in texts might create multiple meanings
• Understand how language use evolves over time and in different places and cultures, and is influenced by technological and social developments

Reading for challenge, interest and enjoyment

• Read texts selected to challenge thinking, develop interest and promote enjoyment, to prompt a personal response
• Read a variety of texts that present a range of perspectives and experiences, including those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, and respond in a range of ways, including sustained written responses where appropriate
• Read texts of interest for sustained periods of time and respond to this reading in a variety of ways
• Use strategies to enhance interest and overcome challenges experienced when reading
• Communicate purposefully with peers in response to texts
• Understand the ways reading helps us understand ourselves and make connections to others and to the world

Understanding and responding to texts A

A student analyses how meaning is created through the use of and response to language forms, features and structures EN4-URA-01

Characterisation

• Analyse how engaging characters are constructed in texts through a range of language features and structures, and use these features and structures in own texts
• Describe how characters in texts, including stereotypes, archetypes, flat and rounded, static and dynamic characters represent values and attitudes, and experiment with these in own texts
• Understand how the interactions of characters, such as protagonists and antagonists, might be perceived to represent aspects of human relationships, and experiment with interactions when composing texts

Narrative

• Understand narrative conventions, such as setting, plot and sub-plot, and how they are used to represent events and personally engage the reader, viewer or listener with ideas and values in texts, and apply this understanding in own texts
• Examine how narratives can depict personal and collective identities, values and experiences

Genre

• Understand how a genre addresses its purpose through patterns of textual elements, such as structure, choice of language, character archetypes and settings, and apply these patterns in own texts
• Analyse how texts can participate in larger, established patterns of narrative, purpose, theme and tone by exhibiting and challenging conventions, and experiment with conventions in own texts
• Explore particular genres to identify ways they may be adapted to different modes and media, or refreshed by combining with other genres, and experiment with these in own texts

(English K-10 Syllabus 2022 © NSW Education Standards Authority for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales, 2023) 

Connecting texts